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UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IN AMERICA 



BY 

FRED EASTMAN 



Prepared Under the Direction of 

The Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church 

in the U. S. A. 

The Woman's Board of Home Missions 

The Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work 

The Board of Missions for Freedmen 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 
1921 






COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
FEED EASTMAN 



DEC - 8 132/ 



CI.A653U28 



n*a / 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 7 

I. IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 13 

H. AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE 41 

(a) MEXICANS IN THE UNITED STATES 44 

(b) PORTO RICANS 58 

(c) CUBANS 72 

III. IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 79 

IV. IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 105 

V. AMONG ALASKANS AND INDIANS 127 

(tt) ALASKANS 130 

(6) INDIANS 142 

VI. THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 153 



FOREWORD 

It is a good thing for each denomination to seek to 
determine as clearly as it can its own distinctive duty. 
Unless it does this it is not in a position to plan its proper 
courses of action or to draw out and use the resources of 
its membership. It is in no presumptuous or vaunting 
spirit that the different groups of Christians in our country 
to-day are seeking thus to ascertain each its own rightful 
share in the one great task. They are working together 
in more united and trustful relations than ever before and 
their work both separately and together will be far more 
effective by reason of their sure discernment of their own 
respective obligations. 

Mr. Eastman seeks in this little volume to help Presby- 
terians to realize what their part is or ought to be in some 
of the great tasks before the Christian forces in America. 
He has been obliged, of necessity, to select a few of these 
tasks and to present each of them in as suggestive a way 
as possible. And the reader will surely agree that he has 
done his work exceedingly well. 

Some people are inspired to greater effort by the success 
of the work which they have already done. Others are 
stirred more by the thought not of the "petty done" but of 
the "undone vast." They agree with Browning that " 'Tis 
not what man does that exalts him, but what man would 
do." Mr. Eastman has wisely set forth both the work done 
and the work still to be done. He has told concrete and 
moving stories of men and women and the deeds they have 
wrought by God's blessing in ministering to human need, 

5 



6 FOREWORD 

in creating Christian faith and character, and in making 
our country more nearly a Christian land. And he has 
also drawn the broad and all too dark picture of the vast 
needs still unmet which call for the lives of young men 
and young women and for the prayer and support of the 
whole Church. 

How can these be withheld in the face of such evidence 
of the rich lucrativeness of the investments of life and 
wealth in that great service of America and of the world? 
For while this volume deals only with the unfinished business 
of the Church at home, great issues for all the world hang 
upon the Church's attitude to that business. We can give 
only what we have. And we ought to do our whole duty in 
America both for America's sake and for the sake of the 
world. 

That is the Church's business but it is more than that. 
It is God's. And there is a word of our Lord's wholly 
relevant with regard to it: "Knew ye not that I must be 
about my Father's business?" May we all be set more dili- 
gently to doing that business by the study of this book. 

Robert E. Speer 



INTRODUCTION 

The Presbyterian Church shares with all other denomi- 
nations the common purpose of making this world Christian. 
We are all trying to make Christ's law of love and service 
the controlling law of human life. We are all endeavoring 
to convert the spirit of suspicion into a spirit of faith; 
the spirit of greed into a spirit of giving; the spirit of 
hatred into a spirit of love; the spirit of selfishness into a 
spirit of service. We are all working for the Kingdom of 
God, the time when men shall live together as brothers in 
justice, righteousness, and friendship. 

In this task there is a differentiation of labor. Each de- 
nomination stresses those particular phases of the general 
task for which its history, traditions, and point of view 
have fitted it. Historically the Presbyterian Church has 
stressed especially religious and political freedom, education, 
and Christian service. To be sure we have no monopoly on 
these ideals. We do not want monopoly. On the contrary 
we have been trying to get them universally accepted. Get- 
ting them universally accepted is part of the unfinished 
business of our Church. 

The reason for our striving for religious and political 
freedom, education, and service, is deep-rooted in our theol- 
ogy. You cannot plant in the human heart the great concep- 
tion of a sovereign God, indwelling in the human soul, with- 
out that idea some day flowering in a reverence for human 
personality. And sooner or later reverence for human per- 
sonality bears fruit in practical efforts for freedom, edu- 
cation, and service; for freedom, education, and service are 
necessary for the full development of the divine possibili- 
ties in human personality. 

That is why the Presbyterian Church has always made 
evangelism — by which we mean getting the human soul 

7 



« INTRODUCTION 

into fellowship with God — fundamental in all its work. In 
this we are following the method of Jesus. He called his 
disciples one by one into fellowship with God. Once they 
were in that fellowship they grew speedily out of littleness 
into greatness; out of ignorance into understanding; out 
of bondage into freedom. They in turn planted the seed 
of this great conception in the minds of others and, like a 
sapling that will not be confined, it forced its way into 
Jewish morality, then into Greek philosophy, then into the 
Roman Empire, and so on through the centuries. Those 
great experiments in human liberty, the Swiss and Dutch 
Republics, the Commonwealth of England, and the United 
States of America are all products of that seed. The best 
of our literature and art, our music and our drama, our 
education and our culture, sprang from the same source. 
. When the conception of a sovereign God dwelling in 
the human soul took root in the minds of our Presbyterian 
forefathers it had a similar growth and bore similar fruit. 
Consider those fruits in America alone. 

We were the first organized body on American soil to pro- 
pound the doctrine of a free Church and a free State. 
In 1729, thirty-seven years before the signing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the Presbyterian Church declared 
for a separation of Church and State. In 1765 the Presby- 
terians and the Congregationalists cooperated in resisting 
a plan to set up in the colonies an Episcopal establishment 
and to tax "dissenters" for its maintenance. The year 
before, when political feeling was running high, the Gen- 
eral Synod was courageous enough to send out a pastoral 
letter to all Presbyterians urging their loyal support to the 
Continental Congress. At the same time a convention in 
North Carolina composed of delegates who were mainly 
Presbyterians issued the famous Mecklenburg Declaration 
of Independence preceding the action of the Colonial Con- 



INTRODUCTION g 

gress by more than a year. Our Church "taught, practiced, 
and maintained in fullness, first in this land, that form of 
government in accordance with which this Republic was or- 
ganized. The historian Bancroft says: "The Revolution 
of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presby- 
terian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the prin- 
ciples which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted 
in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, 
the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Pres- 
byterians of Ulster.' " 1 

As for education, we are a college-building, rather than a 
cathedral-building, Church. The impulse toward education 
is our historical heritage. John Knox could not conceive of 
churches apart from schools. His enthusiasm for education 
was brought to this country by the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, 
who established our Church here, and that enthusiasm has 
characterized it ever since. For more than a hundred and 
fifty years the normal requirement for admission to the 
ministry has included diplomas representing both classical 
and theological training. No denomination has maintained 
a higher standard in this line. If our ideal for the ministry 
has been high, our ideal for the laity has been equally high. 
The Presbyterian Church has established 12 theological sem- 
inaries, 63 colleges and academies, and a total of 2036 
schools of all kinds in 16 countries. 

There is no particular reason why Christian service should 
be spoken of as something distinct from political and re- 
ligious freedom and education, for fostering such ideals 
is the greatest kind of service. But in practice we have 
come to use the term "service" more in the sense of lend- 
ing a helping hand to less favored neighbors at home and 
abroad. Caring for the sick, the distressed, the broken: 

1 Cf. Roberts, A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church. 



io INTRODUCTION 

providing opportunities of education; affording voca- 
tional training and culture for those who would not other- 
wise have them; bringing the dynamic of true religion into 
lives that are wasting away for want of it — these are forms 
of service that the Presbyterian Church has always counted 
itself under divine orders to carry on. Our first missionary 
was appointed in 1775. He was Rev. Samuel Davies sent 
by the Hanover Presbytery to Georgia. He soon became 
known as the champion of freedom, the founder of churches, 
and the friend of learning. Twelve years later we find a 
general missionary collection being ordered throughout all 
Presbyterian churches. Last year our 77 hospitals and 98 
dispensaries at home and abroad treated 350,284 patients. 
We maintained too nearly 4000 home and foreign mis- 
sionaries. 

Now these efforts and the great religious conceptions out 
of which they grew, are all very good. We take what 
Roosevelt called a "decent pride" in them. But Presby- 
terians of this generation cannot get into heaven or get 
heaven into men on the strength of our forefathers' efforts. 
We must work out our own salvation. There is a mass 
of unfinished business before us which we must attend to if 
we are to be worthy sons of worthy sires. In the chapters 
that follow the author has endeavored to outline this un- 
finished business in America. He has treated it especially 
in relation to the practical problems and the specific groups 
among which the Church is working. These specific groups 
include among others the 3,000,000 Southern mountaineers, 
13,000,000 foreign born, 11,000,000 Negroes, 1 3,000,000 
Latin Americans, 1,750,000 Mexicans, 1,500,000 migrant 
laborers, 334,000 Indians, 54,000 Alaskans, and 500,000 
Mormons. 

1 The unfinished task among the Nesroes is barely mentioned in 
this book because it is to be given a whole volume to itself in the 
plan of study for the succeeding year. 



INTRODUCTION n 

In dealing with our responsibilities to these groups, let 
us keep constantly before us our historic ideals of religious 
and political freedom, education, and Christian service. 
More important yet, let us bear in mind that these great 
ideals are the product of such religious conceptions as 
our faith in a sovereign God, dwelling in the human soul. 
Fundamental in all our unfinished business, therefore, is 
evangelism, or getting individuals into fellowship with God. 
Let us state this here at the beginning in no uncertain terms. 
If the Presbyterian Church were to forget its history and be- 
come so blind as not to see the religious roots of its passion 
for freedom, its desire for education, and its devotion to 
human service, and were to set about working for these 
things simply through laws and movements whose object is 
to change social environment, it would be a useful institu- 
tion, but it would cease to be a Christian Church. As a 
Christian Church we hold that the dynamic of social and 
political progress is religion and the most effective method 
of changing environment is through the individual, and 
the most powerful method of changing the individual is to 
get him into fellowship with God. 

If any further proof of the fundamental necessity of evan- 
gelism is needed it lies in the fact that more than sixty per 
cent of the people of America are not identified with any 
Christian Church, either Protestant or Catholic, and who 
shall say how many of those who are nominal members 
of the Church are still strangers to God! 

In each chapter the author has sought to outline briefly 
the whole task, to describe in some detail one or two specific 
pieces of work the Church is conducting through its mis- 
sionaries in that particular field, and finally to sum up the 
task that remains. In no case has he tried to catalogue 
all the various projects of the various mission projects of 
the various Boards and agencies. Any such attempt would 



12 INTRODUCTION 

produce an encyclopedia and would be a weariness to the 
flesh. It is better to have a dozen clear pictures that show 
the spirit and method of the work, than a hundred accounts 
that would of necessity be sketchy. The author has as- 
sumed also that the reader is interested not so much in the 
particular Board or agency that is doing a piece of work 
as in the task itself. 

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to Mrs. M. A. 
Gildersleeve, Miss Mabel M. Sheibley, Dr. John A. Marquis, 
Mr. B. Carter Millikin, Mr. John M. Somerndike, Dr. 
John M. Gaston, and Rev. John Bailey Kelly, for reading 
the manuscript and for their friendly counsel and criticism. 
Mrs. Gildersleeve and Miss Sheibley also supplied informa- 
tion on many missionary projects. To Mr. Somerndike the 
writer is further indebted for much material on the work 
of colporteurs and the unfinished task of the Church in 
religious education. Thanks are also due to Mr. Charles 
A. Thomson, whose excellent report of the camp on Cata- 
lina Island was the basis of part of the chapter on the 
Mexican work; to Dr. Edmund deS. Brunner for much 
material on rural surveys; to Rev. Kenneth Miller, Rev. 
Robert W. Anthony, W. P. Fulton, D.D., Rev. W. C. 
McGarvey, the late George W. Montgomery, D.D., Rev. 
James J. Coale, Charles L. Zorbaugh, D.D., William T. 
Jaquess, D.D., Rev. W. Clyde Smith, and Rev. Robert S. 
Donaldson for information concerning the work of their 
respective church extension organizations. 

And last but not least, the writer expresses his humble 
gratitude to his wife who kept the babies quiet while he 
wrote. 



CHAPTER I 
IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 



SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The mountain section stretches along the southern 
portion of the Appalachian Mountains and extends 
into northern Georgia and Alabama, embracing a re- 
gion of two or three million acres. In the Southern 
Mountains the people live for the most part by hunt- 
ing, fishing, and growing such corn and vegetables as 
are absolutely needed. This region is rich in timber 
and mineral deposits. The chief occupations are agri- 
culture, logging, and until recently, distilling. 

The main features of the problem in this section 
are: isolation, illiteracy, and arrested development. 
Housing and general living conditions are not good 
and result in the widespread prevalence of disease. 
There are few schools and churches, little knowledge 
of what goes on in the outside world, and small inter- 
est either in local or national politics. 

Most of the preaching is now done by voluntary 
pastors, of little education and training, with a great 
but almost superstitious belief in God. Large por- 
tions of this country have no religious services of any 
kind, 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions 
ten boarding schools and fifteen community stations 
have been maintained. The boarding schools are lo- 
cated at Mount Vernon, Kentucky; Harriman, Ten- 
nessee; Col cord, West Virginia; four at Asheville, 
one at Concord and two at Hot Springs, North Caro- 
lina. These schools employ ninety commissioned 
workers and enroll 88 3 boys and girls with an average 
attendance of 660 per day. 

The community stations are located at Cortland, 
Smith, Traveler's Rest, Garrard and Woonton, Ken- 
tucky; Sevierville, Flag Pond, and two at Sneedville, 
Tennessee ; Cabell, Dorothy, Dry Creek, and Mont- 
coal, West Virginia; and Osage Iron Works and Proc- 
tor, Missouri. Twenty-eight workers are engaged in 
these fifteen stations. Last year there were 424 stu- 
dents enrolled in special classes of an educational 
nature. 

Through the Board of Home Missions, the Presby- 
terian Church is rendering a ministry of health, edu- 
cation, and evangelism, employing eighteen ministers, 
seventeen teachers, two physicians, £ve nurses, and 
ten community workers. A hospital and industrial 
center is being developed at White Rock, North Caro- 
lina; schools at Alpine and Jewett, Tennessee, and at 
Burnsville, North Carolina; a church and community 
center work at Vardy, Tennessee, and at Kingston, 
Arkansas. 

Good work — but only a drop in t h e bucket when 
we consider that more than 3,000,000 human beings are 
to be reached. 



UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Chapter I 
IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 

A Story of the Laurel Country. "The doctor's going 
is like the stopping of running water." It was a moun- 
tain woman's tribute to Dr. George H. Packard when 
after seven years of unremitting toil in the Laurel country 
of western North Carolina he left to take a rest and regain 
his health. Another of his mountain friends, a man, put 
it this way, "I'd be satisfied if the doctor would just fly 
over here once a week in an airplane and wave his hand." 

Seven years before, he had come into the community when 
there was neither railroad nor good road, nor doctor, nor 
nurse, nor newspaper, nor preacher within a radius of 
eighteen miles. He had met suspicion and prejudice and 
hostility, and no wonder! for most of those who had come 
into the community from the outside world had merely 
come to stare, and then had gone away to laugh at the 
ways of the mountain people. Somehow the doctor had 
overcome the suspicion and prejudice and hostility, and now 
after seven years' work he was leaving behind him a thor- 
oughly equipped hospital, an able associate doctor, a nurse, 
and some hundreds of friends that would have gladly shared 
their all with him. 

But, after all, this story doesn't begin with the doctor's 
coming. In fact it is difficult to find just where it does 
begin. Our Presbyterian faith tells us that it all began 

16 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 17 

in the heart of God, but we are curious enough to want 
to know more about the human beings through whom he 
worked. When you talk to the doctor he tells you of his 
capable wife, and of Miss Frances L. Goodrich and Miss 
Fish, two brave women who labored here for eighteen years 
before he came. And he tells you of the late Mr. Campbell 
of the Russell Sage Foundation and of Dr. Warren H. 
Wilson of the Board of Home Missions. All these he says 
were in the conspiracy. Ask of them and you are told that 
Miss Florence Stephenson, formerly head of the Asheville 
Home School of the Woman's Home Board, was respon- 
sible for enlisting them. If you trace the thing back from 
the Board records in New York you reach ultimately the 
same answer — Miss Stephenson. You find that in 1886 
Rev. and Mrs. Pease gave some property in the suburbs 
of Asheville for home mission purposes and here a little 
later was started the first Industrial School, with Miss 
Stephenson as principal. A young woman of large vision, 
big heart, and great executive ability, she seems to have 
been a moving spirit in nearly every good work in that 
region for the last thirty years. At the time of this writing 
she is in Alaska and unreachable. It's just as well for it 
seems to be fatal to talk to her on this subject. Before she 
is through with you she has signed you up to spend the 
rest of your days in some mountain community forty miles 
from a railroad, and you are thanking her for the privilege. 
That is what happened to Miss Goodrich about twenty- 
five years ago. She visited Miss Stephenson's school in 
Asheville, and a few months later she accepted a life sen- 
tence and seemed to be happy about it. Miss Goodrich 
had had the training of a Presbyterian manse, college, art 
schools, travel in America and Europe, and she put it all 
into her work in the Southern Mountains so gladly and 
effectively for the next twenty-five years that she is known 



18 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

and loved to-day throughout that mountain region as 
"the little bishop of Laurel." 

What was her work? She began by going into a moun- 
tain community where the people had been shut away from 
the opportunities that the rest of us have had, opportunities 
for proper schooling, wholesome social life, books, travel, 
and even church. It had always been difficult to get thor- 
oughly trained teachers to go into such communities, be- 
cause they had no suitable place to live, the salary was 
meager, and usually the school term was only a few weeks. 
Often the total school appropriation from the school dis- 
trict was under $50.00 for the entire year. Miss Good- 
rich's first aim was to provide a home for a teacher. She 
would secure or build some little cottage where the teacher 
would be comfortable. She would live in that house with 
the teacher, be a companion to her, and help her in the 
school when needed, and gradually persuade the community 
round about to better the school, provide more money for 
it, and lengthen the school term to eight months. She took 
one community at a time and stayed by it until the school 
was well on the way to standard and the people ready to 
go on with it. Then she would secure a capable woman 
community worker to take her place with the teacher and 
she would move on to the next community. Always she 
chose her next place with care. She would never duplicate 
the work of any other missionary, or enter a field possessed 
by some other denomination. Thus it was that she estab- 
lished her work at Rice's Cove, Allanstand, Alleghany, Big 
Laurel, Carmen, Revere, and White Rock. 

Right here should be set down the record of a "perfect 
cycle" — a long-headed piece of statesmanship. Beginning 
with a school that was held three or four weeks a year and 
taught usually by a mountain man whose own education was 
very deficient — sometimes he could not teach writing be- 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 19 

cause he could not write himself — Miss Goodrich increased 
the length of the school term, provided a capable teacher, 
and supplemented the school fund with as much money as 
was necessary to pay a good teacher for six or eight months. 
The teacher and the community worker watched each de- 
veloping child. The more promising children were en- 
couraged to complete eight grades and then to go on to 
Asheville Home School where they were given a four-year 
course 'fitting them to go back into their mountain communi- 
ties as teachers taking the places of the teachers Miss 
Goodrich had brought in from the outside. Thus the 
cycle was completed. The school was again taught by 
one of its own community but this time by an educated 
girl and for a period of eight months instead of a few 
weeks. 

Where did Miss Goodrich get the money? For the most 
part she begged it. She begged from her personal friends 
and from her father's congregation in Cleveland. 

But she was not content to beg all her money from the 
outside. The mountaineers themselves had practically no 
money, but this did not daunt her. She set to work on a 
plan by which they could earn money. The consummation 
of this plan was the formation of the Allanstand Cottage 
Industries, manufacturing rugs, table runners, baskets, and 
so forth. The grandmothers of the mountain women had 
developed these arts to a high degree but they had been 
allowed to fall into disuse, partly from lack of materials 
and partly from lack of market. Miss Goodrich began by 
providing materials and then offering herself to take charge 
of the marketing. The old grandmothers' looms were re- 
stored, repaired, and put to work. The old patterns were re- 
vived. When a sufficient number of quilts, baskets, and 
rugs were finished, Miss Goodrich offered them for sale in 



20 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Asheville and in New York. The sale was difficult at first 
but when she put into the hands of the mountain women 
who had made the articles, the money which she had re- 
ceived from them, their gratitude encouraged her to go on. 
Last year she sold $12,000 worth of these products. This 
was bringing into the community money which could 
be used for giving the children better education and 
for purchasing those bits of the outside world for which the 
mountain women were hungering. 

Many stories have been told about the southern moun- 
taineers and their ways. Miss Goodrich was warned when 
she went into the mountains that she should never go alone. 
She must always have some one with her to protect her. 
Yet she always went alone and never had any protection 
except the companionship of some other woman. In twenty- 
five years she has never been insulted. One night two 
drunken men drove up to her little cabin where she and a 
community worker were living. The men demanded food 
and lodging. Stepping out on the little stoop Miss Good- 
rich faced them and spoke quietly, "We are just women 
alone here," she said. The men with hats off apologized 
for troubling them and rode away. 

Building up schools and starting industries would be 
enough to keep an ordinary woman busy, but Miss Good- 
rich and her community workers were not ordinary women 
and they were called upon for many other kinds of com- 
munity service. Since there was no doctor they were often 
called upon to help cure the sick, to pull teeth, to "lay out" 
the dead. From a famous surgeon in Asheville, Miss Good- 
rich secured six vials of the more common medicines along 
with careful instruction how to use them. No one knew 
better than she that this sort of treatment was only a stop- 
gap, and gradually the conviction grew upon her that some- 
how she must arrange to have a real doctor come to live 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 21 

among the mountain people to render them the medical 
service they so much needed. 

One day a baby died — a baby that might have lived 
had there been a doctor to minister to it. Thereupon Miss 
Goodrich applied to Mr. Campbell, Russell Sage Foundation 
Director of Southern Mountain work, to find her a doctor 
who would be willing to go down and live among the moun- 
taineers. 

And here the story leaves the Southern Mountains and 
follows Mr. Campbell to Medford, Massachusetts, and to 
the private hospital of Dr. George H. Packard. Dr. Packard 
had just lost his only child. The loss had been almost 
more than he could bear and he went away with a heavy 
heart about the practice in which he had been happy for 
sixteen years. More and more after his baby died he was 
interested in children. When Mr. Campbell's wife was about 
to bring into the world her first-born, Mr. Campbell took 
her to Dr. Packard's private hospital, and there it was that 
as acquaintance ripened into friendship Mr. Campbell pre- 
sented to Dr. Packard the needs of the Southern Mountains 
and especially of the Laurel country. It was there that he 
told Dr. Packard of the baby that had died because no 
doctor was available. 

Dr. Packard listened and was moved. He was willing 
to go down and take a look at the country. Mr. Campbell 
lost no time in arranging it. It was late in October, and 
amid sleet, rain, and mud when the visit was made. For 
ten days Dr. Packard and his wife plodded through the mud. 
Finally on their way back to the nearest railroad station 
he turned to Mrs. Packard. "Well, dear, would you be 
willing to tackle the job under these conditions?" Mrs. 
Packard had been a missionary in China and had lived 
through the Boxer uprising and her answer came quickly, 
"I am willing to come back if I ever live to get out." So it 



22 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

came about that Dr. Packard and Mrs. Packard, seven 
years ago, left a successful practice and a private hospital 
in Medford, Massachusetts, and bringing all they had in 
the world — character and training, instruments and furni- 
ture — invested all in the lives of the men and women 
and children of Laurel Country. 

Consider the difficulties the doctor faced. There was 
no railroad less than 18 miles distant. The only highways 
were mountain trails, for long periods impassable except on 
horseback. Most of the cabins were located along creeks 
in the mountains far removed from road or telephone or any 
connection whatever with the outside world. The average 
mountain home had but one or two rooms, and was without 
rug or carpet or furniture except a few homemade chairs. 
Pigs and chickens as well as cats and dogs had the freedom 
of the house. Patent medicines were considered trust- 
worthy. All children were brought into the world by mid- 
wives. The only doctor the people had ever known had sold 
medicine at twenty-five cents a bottle and sometimes the 
medicine was a drink of whisky. The nearest hospital was 
in Asheville, fifty-two miles away, and so inaccessible was it 
because of the roads, that it might as well have been a 
thousand miles away. 

Moreover folks were not likely to send for the doctor 
until their case had become more or less serious, and they 
had exhausted the traditional methods of treatment. It was 
in these very traditional methods that the doctor found one 
of his chief difficulties. Turpentine was regarded as a 
cure-all and had been applied in many cases where it did 
more harm than good. Called to treat a severely burned 
arm the doctor would likely find that a "remedy" had 
already been applied, the "remedy" consisting of a coating 
of molasses and soot. This, of course, the doctor had to 
remove before he could begin any constructive work on 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 23 

the wound. Often he found severe cuts filled with lime or 
soot, "to stop the flow of blood." 

Never was there any privacy in treating patients. When 
a man or a woman fell ill and the doctor was finally called, 
he found upon his arrival that the house was filled with 
neighbors who observed his every move with intense interest. 
"Watch him! Watch him!" passed in whispers around the 
circle and the doctor's every act was performed amid a 
"cloud of witnesses." At first he was regarded with sus- 
picion. Something was wrong, folks felt, with a doctor 
who would come into that remote section. Mountain 
children scampered into the brush at his approach. For a 
long time some of the older folk tried to catch him in a lie. 
But his modesty and sincerity disarmed the suspicion and 
when they discovered that the doctor was a religious man 
and occasionally prayed over cases that he felt were beyond 
his normal skill, they began to have faith in him. For 
the mountain people, whatever their deliquencies, are re- 
ligious. The Bible is their one book. It was on the common 
ground of religion that they met and understood the 
doctor. And by and by they began to apply to him a high 
tribute: "He's common," by which they meant that he was 
democratic and they had taken him into their hearts. 

The doctor's first case was a bullet wound which had been 
received at a wedding celebration. In order to show their 
good will a number of neighbors had gathered in front of 
the cabin of the bride and groom and were dancing around 
shooting revolvers into the air and into the ground. One 
shot entered the leg of a mountain man and the doctor was 
called to treat him. It was difficult but the doctor probed 
for the bullet and found it; then he carefully bound up 
the wound and instructing the patient in its care, went away. 
When he called again he was told that the wound was not 
healing properly because it had not discharged any pus. 



24 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

The discharge of pus had been so inevitable in the local 
treatment of bullet wounds that it was regarded as essential 
to healing. 

The doctor's second case was that of a child of the same 
family. The child was afflicted with membraneous croup in 
an advanced stage. It was a most serious case, but the 
doctor took special interest in saving the lives of children, 
so for three days and three nights he stayed with the child 
and saw it through to safety. 

His third case aroused the interest of the community for 
many miles around. It was appendicitis and the victim was 
Jamison Tweed, a man of seventy years and very large. 
But he was an old soldier and had no more than the average 
human being's fear of the surgeon's knife. So in a little 
frame house next the old post office he consented to be 
stretched out upon a table while a preacher administered 
ether and the neighbors gathered in a crowd to watch a 
surgical operation that few, if any, believed could possibly 
be successful. But in spite of all the handicaps the operation 
was successful and Jamison Tweed is to-day sitting on his 
vine-covered porch telling stories of the Civil War and call- 
ing a friendly word to passers-by. 

It was not human ills alone that the doctor was called to 
treat. Sickness was sickness whether in man or animal, 
and a doctor's business was to heal the sick. So he was 
called upon for all kinds of veterinary work. Not an easy 
case was that of a horse which had cut its throat on a 
barbed-wire fence. In order to stop the flow of blood the 
owner had filled a gunny sack with manure and placed it 
upon the wound. 

As the fame of the doctor's skill spread throughout the 
Laurel country he began to be called upon more and more. 
Day and night his faithful horse could be seen plodding 
along the trails through heat or rain or snow. And every call 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 25 

now meant not one case but several, for when the doctor's 
horse was seen in a given neighborhood the news passed 
from cabin to cabin and from creek to creek, so that upon 
his return trip the doctor would find a number of patients 
waiting along his homeward trail. To facilitate the work 
in the several communities the doctor began to use the com- 
munity houses Miss Goodrich had established. At each of 
these he held a clinic, usually once a week, and to these 
clinics the neighbors brought their sick. Each clinic aver- 
aged from five to fifteen persons treated, and the cases 
ran the whole range of general oractice and surgery. He 
pulled teeth and mended broken bones; he extracted bullets 
and allayed fevers. And always he educated, giving friendly 
counsel about the care of children and the cooking of food, 
the value of sanitation and the virtue of right living. 

As his practice grew a nurse was sent to help him, Miss 
Mabel Rich, who had been in Red Cross service in Russia. 
We cannot do justice to Miss Rich in this chapter 
but some day her story will be written and it will be a story 
of courage, devotion, and service worthy of the highest 
traditions of American womanhood. And the other nurses 
who followed later, who left better pay in the cities, and 
homes of refinement to give their youth and training to the 
service of those who needed them here in the mountains — 
Miss Harrington and Miss Gardner — what shall be said of 
them? There is nothing that can be said that will add one 
whit to their glory. But there is a line in the great Book 
that describes them: They that do "such things make it 
manifest that they are seeking a country of their own 
wherefore . . . God is not ashamed of them to be called 
their God." 

Five years have passed. There on the side of a mountain, 
just over the old post office where the first school was 
conducted and where Jamison Tweed parted with his ap- 



26 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

pendix, stands a new building. It is the Laurel Hospital 
and it is the fruit of the labor of Miss Goodrich and Dr. 
Packard and the teachers and community workers and 
nurses who have been putting their lives into this country. 
It cost $30,000 and most of this amount Miss Goodrich 
begged. The local contractors and the sawmill owners 
gave generously of their time and product. The mountain 
people themselves raised a fund of $700 — not an insig- 
nificant amount considering the scarcity of money in the 
mountains — to help to pay for a water main of a mile 
of pipe from a spring on top the mountain into the hos- 
pital. The building was planned on the unit plan largely 
by Mrs. Packard herself. She knew hers would be the 
task of housekeeper and matron so she spared no pains 
in seeing to it that the hospital was modern in every con- 
venience, that closets were ample and rightly located, that 
steps would be saved wherever possible. Operating room, 
consulting room, physicians' apartments, nurses' apart- 
ment, kitchen, and dining room — all are up-to-date in 
design and appointment. 

And there in a line winding up the steps to the porch are 
some fifty or sixty children waiting their turn to have their 
weights recorded by Dr. Packard. For he proposes to 
keep an eye on every child in order that he may detect 
incipient diseases and prevent them from getting serious. 
And these are the children who when the doctor first came to 
the Laurel Country scampered into the bushes like fright- 
ened rabbits when they met him upon the road. 

And the patients — what of them? Miss Goodrich writes 
of the first ones: 

The hospital, all unprepared, had its first patient thrust 
upon it. One day in May shots were heard close by in 
the hollow, and then cries, and more shots and more. Soon 
a man was brought up to the hospital doors, filled from neck 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 27 

to toe literally, with squirrel shot. It was a quarrel be- 
tween brothers over the trespassing of a horse in a wheat 
field. The victim had refrained from shooting back, though 
he had his gun, because their mother had run in between 
them. 

In the hospital the water system was unfinished, the fur- 
nishings and equipment meager, and the nurses had not 
yet arrived. Miss Mabel Rich, who was so long with Dr. 
Packard and who was being released for public-health 
work, gladly came to help in the emergency. Some of the 
wounds were serious, but the patient made a good recovery. 

Scarcely had he gone before Miss Rich herself, and a 

young friend, Miss S , were brought in very seriously 

injured, the buggy in which they were driving having gone 
over an embankment on to sharp rocks below. Narrow 
mountain roads, horses, and Ford cars are not a safe com- 
bination. Our nurses' aide, Miss Thorpe, had arrived that 
very day and a wire hastened the coming of the graduate 
nurse, Miss Griffith, from Maryland. There was a period 

of sharp anxiety before Miss Rich and Miss S could 

be pronounced convalescent. 

Then a young man with typhoid was brought in from one 
of the lumber camps and soon another followed. These 
proved to be serious cases, and for a long time the issue 
was doubtful. Both recovered and were able to return to 
their homes in October. Both were from West Virginia 
— one the son of a Presbyterian minister. 

One night at twelve o'clock the doorbell rang and a little 
girl was carried in. She had taken a drink from a can 
of concentrated lye and it seemed at first a hopeless case. 
She had been treated by the neighbors and her grandfather 
until they saw her getting worse, when they decided to make 
the trip to the new hospital. By proper treatment and good 
nursing she was restored to health. 

Several accident cases from the logging camps have been 
in for short periods, thus receiving in the first hours of their 
injuries adequate attention and care. A man who came in 
for a few days with a hand badly hurt, necessitating ampu- 
tation of two fingers, said to Miss Thorpe the first night, 
"I never thought anybody could be so good to anyone as 
you are to me, a stranger." 



28 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Soon after this our first hospital baby was born, and later, 
two more. These were all cases where special care and 
skill were needed. It is one of the wonders that Dr. Packard 
has performed, that in the first case, especially, mother and 
child are both living and well. 

The first death in the hospital was from old age. Granny 
Banks was "by way of being a doctor herself," and pro- 
fessional jealousy made her bitter against Dr. Packard and 
his nurses. Her greeting to them on the road was a curse. 
She adjured more than one of her friends to see to it that 
when her time came she did not die with any doctor's 
stuff inside her. But when she fell ill at last she told her 
grandson to send for Dr. Packard, he might give her 
"some tea" that would make her well. A stroke came before 
the doctor was sent for, and it was with her good will 
that she was carried into the building toward which she 
had cast so many evil glances. She was made comfortable 
for the ten days of gradual sinking till "her change came." 
Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren would climb the 
steps and tiptoe through the halls to stand and look at 
granny lying unconscious and to say how much better off 
she was than they could have made her. 

There was a shooting down on the creek one night and 
after some days' delay the victim was brought in, and then 
taken to Asheville for an X rays. One bullet was lodged in 
the back of the neck, another in the back, both too near the 
spinal cord to be extracted with safety. So back to the 
Laurel Hospital he was brought, to die, as everyone said, 
but he lived and slowly recovered the use of his limbs, and 
when finally discharged, was able to walk out of the build- 
ing. I saw him on the road the other day, husky and hearty 
looking. 

No human being could take charge of such a hospital and 
continue to do the "outside work" as well — driving over the 
mountains all hours of the days and nights seeking the sick 
and distressed. Dr. Packard tried it and his health broke. 
That is why he was sent away for a vacation. It explains, 
also, the coming of Dr. Holden to take care of the outside 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 29 

work and to help Dr. Packard in the hospital. Dr. Holden 
had seen service in France and was looking for just such an 
opportunity to put his life into some new field. 

Just why Mrs. Packard has not broken down is not quite 
clear. "Mrs. Packard," said her husband, "is a wonder. 
She not only planned this hospital but she runs 
it. Everything is in order and always ready. Last year 
when we had twenty-five doctors and nurses down here 
from Asheville for a two-day clinic she took care of every 
one of them without any hitch in the machinery." Proudly 
she takes visitors down into the storeroom and, opening 
the doors of the closet, discloses more than five-hundred 
quarts of canned fruits and vegetables all standing like little 
soldiers at attention. For fear her hands may get into 
some mischief this year, Mrs. Packard has planned to 
provide hot lunches for the 140 school children who have 
come to the new school building across the road. 

"How about yourself, doctor?" the writer asked. "Now 
that your vacation is over and Dr. Holden will take the 
outside work, aren't you glad you won't have so many of 
those lonely night rides on horseback over the mountains?" 

He smiled. "They were never lonely" he said. "You 
see I always had some sixty friends along." 

"Sixty friends?" 

"Yes, Orion, the Pleiades, Andromeda, Ursa Major and 
Minor, Cassiopeia — " and he reeled off a list of his stellar 
friends as if they were his cronies. He is "common" with 
the stars. 

There you have a picture of Dr. Packard, on his faithful 
horse riding along over the mountains in the dead of night 
communing with stars and bound for a distant cabin where 
some one, very likely a child, is awaiting his healing touch. 

Presbyterian Schools in the Southern Mountains. 
No stronger factor for the regeneration of the backward 



30 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

and isolated community in the Southern Mountains could 
be found than the educational work the Church is doing. 
Should you take a map of Tennessee, Kentucky, and North 
Carolina and mark on it the points at which the boarding 
schools in this field are located you would find that there 
are ten such schools stamped with the name of the Pres- 
byterian Church. These schools vary one from another 
in size, in emphasis, and in course of study but never in 
purpose, for the development of a Christian leadership is 
the aim of all. 

A visit to any one of these would show that although 
the standard is high as is befitting the work of the Church 
there is a uniqueness in education that challenges attention. 
And the reason for this is apparent. For not only must 
the course of study conform to that prescribed for the pub- 
lic schools of the state, but it must be so general on the 
one hand and so intensive on the other that no boy or girl, 
however limited in previous opportunities, can fail to get 
that which will develop the best in him or her, and no com- 
munity fail to receive later through the training of this 
boy or girl, what it has a right to expect from having one 
of its number "away at school." Back of every boy and 
girl is the community, and the community must be taken 
into consideration in the educational program. 

The Purpose of These Schools. "It is the peculiar 
province of the mission school to educate and 'applicate,' " 
writes Dr. Calfee, President of the Asheville Normal and 
Associated Schools, and then he goes on to say: "It does 
more than look after the needy individual. It fits that per- 
son for the transmission of knowledge and ideals for trans- 
forming and uplifting those back home. Any other policy 
would sink to the low aim of isolated individual uplift." 
Should you question him he would probably explain this by 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 31 

showing you, for instance, the following courses in arith- 
metic outlined in the school catalogue. 

Arithmetic of the Home — Family budget, cost accounts, 
household economics, dietary sanitation. Arithmetic of the 
Farm — Farm accounts, land measure, lumber measure, 
mensuration, painting, papering, et cetera, dairy prob- 
lems, crops, cost of wastefulness versus thrift. Arithmetic 
of Trade — Making change, quick methods, discounts, in- 
voices, profit and loss. Arithmetic of the Bank — Interest, 
bank accounts, promissory notes, bank discount. Arith- 
metic of Community and Civic Life — Good roads, taxes, 
insurance, investments. 

And while he talked, you would see what he is seeing all 
the time — the limited family budget, the insanitary home, 
the poor hillside farm against which there has never been 
reckoned either profit or loss, the stony road that crosses and 
recrosses the creek as it winds its way up the mountain side 
to each tiny cabin, and you would feel with him that there 
could be no "isolated individual uplift" in the schools in 
which you were interested. 

Their Method — Practical Banking, for Example. 
He would explain that not only do they teach banking at 
the Asheville Normal, but they do banking — in fact they 
are bankers, and he would describe the students' thrift bank, 
in organization similar to that of a national bank, with 
president, cashier, and board of directors; with regular 
banking hours, at which time deposits are made and checks 
from ten cents up are cashed; with directors' meetings at 
stated times when plans are made to increase the number of 
depositors, when the financial standing of the bank is ex- 
amined, when action is taken as to what loans and invest- 
ments should be made. 

Home-Making. All this would seem very business-like 
and you would probably commend it, but after all the Ashe- 



32 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

ville Normal is a girls' school and you would certainly want 
to know what particular training is being given to the moun- 
tain girl to fit her for the home. And President Calfee 
would tell you that when the first school on the Asheville 
campus, the Home School, was opened by Miss Florence 
Stephenson thirty-four years ago, much thought was given 
to training that would fit the girls for home-making and that 
every year since that time more and more thought had 
been given to it until now the Normal has not only full and 
detailed courses on domestic science and art, but also a 
practical and applied course in household management, in- 
cluding cooking, nutrition, sanitation, laundry work. In the 
Normal, as in all schools under our Church, the housework 
is so organized that by a system of rotation during the 
year each pupil is given training in the care of the entire 
home. This practical instruction amounts to about two 
hours a day, and each pupil is graded as strictly upon 
her house duties as she is upon her classroom work. But 
more than this: in at least four schools in the moun- 
tain field home-making is taught by an even more direct 
method than a share in the care of the school home, for a 
plan has been worked out by which life may be really 
lived. 

Suppose You Take Dinner in a Cottage. You are 
a guest at the Normal School and an invitation comes to 
you to dine at the mountain cottage across the street from 
the campus. You will be welcomed at the door by an ex- 
tremely young housemother; you will be given a favorite 
chair by the fire, and one by one five girls will slip in 
to greet you and then slip away again. Probably when 
they are gone, and you question the housemother she 
will tell you that she is the mother for the week 
of a family of seven, one a teacher; if you press 
the point, she will tell you modestly that she plans 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 33 

all the meals for this family, keeps an itemized cost of each 
meal, makes all purchases for the house, supervises the home, 
and when the day's work, including lessons, is done, conducts 
family prayers. At dinner you will have the privilege of 
dining with the cook, the milkmaid, the dishwashers, and the 
other workers in the household. Even though a guest you 
will be told with pride the cost of your dinner and graciously 
allowed to see the homemaker's itemized account of which 
you have heard. It would be necessary for you to see it or 
you would not believe that so delicious a dinner could be 
served to eight people for sixty-six cents. You would 
realize, of course, that even at that cost the homemaker 
had been guilty of gross extravagance because there was a 
guest, when you heard that only seven cents a meal per 
person is allowed. This is the plan: The senior class takes 
turns by sixes in living in the model cottage on the campus ; 
at the beginning of each six-week period each cottage is 
given an allowance of twenty-one cents a day per person, 
from which the six must maintain their home in every re- 
spect. In connection with the cottage there are chickens 
and a cow, these to be cared for by the homemakers. There 
is no additional allowance for these, so they must be made 
to maintain their own expenses, all profits to go to the main- 
tenance of the home. Problems of vital importance to 
every home, such as proper distribution of income, food 
budgets, balanced diet, thrift and economy, hygiene and 
sanitation are studied in a scientific way — an extremely 
direct method of teaching the mountain girl what she should 
know. 

Asheville Normal Trains Teachers and Mission- 
aries as Well as Home Makers. A survey of one of the 
largest counties in North Carolina will show that fifty per 
cent of the teachers were educated in the Asheville Normal; 
a survey of the whole state will reveal the fact that 1S2 



34 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

former pupils are teaching in the state. As these girls have 
been trained especially for just such positions through their 
courses in rural sociology, the result is twofold; first, a 
large mission school enrollment of girls from away back 
in our mountains, and second, the community is led along 
lines of progress in church, home, public health, in local 
industries, farm machinery, recreation, good roads. Ashe- 
ville trains missionaries too, and we find its graduates 
— fourteen from two classes alone — in the service of the 
Church not only in our own land from Alaska to Porto Rico, 
and Cuba but also overseas. 

Curriculum Fitted to the Need. The author has 
said that the ten schools differ in size; they do. One has an 
enrollment of 90, another 115, a third 175, the largest 225. 
They also differ in emphasis and course of study. Manual 
training, gardening, agriculture, and pruning and grafting 
of trees are taught in the girls' schools because of the piti- 
able needs of these in the communities from which the girls 
come and the opportunity for leadership in home improve- 
ment and farm development which they may afford. The 
schools for boys stress the former in order that they may 
receive not only the necessary instruction in agriculture, 
fruit-growing, dairying, and gardening, but the incentive 
to return to their homes and develop their small mountain 
farms in a wav that will be of profit to them and an example 
to the community. This is done through clubs, some 
organized on the plan of country poultry clubs, pig clubs, 
etc., and others on the so-called proiect plan. The pig and 
poultry clubs, composed of younger boys not yet ready to 
handle as large an undertaking as a "project," follow the 
plan of having each boy raise a pig or a few chickens. 
Under the "proiect" plan a boy takes over and manages 
all the pigs or chickens on the place under the supervision 
of the rural teacher. In the corn "project" nine or ten boys 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 35 

prepare the ground, plant, raise, and market about fifty 
acres of corn under the direction of a teacher of agriculture 
and the supervision of a capable farm manager. The boys 
also take a course on soils and corn culture. The garden 
"project" is conducted in much the same way, each boy 
looking after about one half an acre. Each boy in a club 
or "project" takes a classroom course in his particular sub- 
ject, the club being a practical laboratory in which he applies 
the knowledge gained from the teacher and the text. In the 
club he does on a small sample-plot scale what he is ex- 
pected to do on a larger scale on his hillside farm when 
he returns to his home in the mountains. 

The Unfinished Task in the Southern Mountains. 
Fascinating as the stories of White Rock and Asheville 
are, they are only two of many places in the Southern Moun- 
tains where the Presbyterian Church is at work. A heroic 
story will some day be written of Miss Helen Dingman and 
her remarkable community and cooperative store work at 
Smith, Kentucky. Our community centers, hospitals, and 
schools are scattered widely through North Carolina, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, and each 
place has an inspiring story of its own — a story of glar- 
ing needs, of insurmountable difficulties, of lives poured 
into hard work and goals sometimes unreached — yet 
for all that our task has just begun. In the Ozarks 
and Southern Appalachians there are about 3,000,000 
Americans, the great majority of whom have not had 
the opportunities for education, for health, or for hap- 
piness that the rest of us have enjoyed. Although they are 
the descendants of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, they have been 
shut off from the rest of the world by lack of roads 
and transportation facilities. The march of progress has 
passed them by. Until recently their schools have been 
conducted for only a few weeks in the year. For the most 



36 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

part the people have been without the help of trained nurses, 
doctors, teachers, or educated ministers. 

More Hospitals and Dispensaries Needed. At White 
Rock, the hospital's work has just begun. That hospital 
must be maintained, for it has decades of work before it in 
building up the bodies and minds of the younger generations. 
And remember that it serves at best a few thousand — while 
there are 3,000,000 altogether to be reached. 

We must have more such hospitals. Where it is impos- 
sible for the Church to build and sustain them it should 
at least erect less expensive dispensaries like that at Smith, 
Kentucky, where emergency cases of the community are 
brought and where at clinics people may learn their ail- 
ments, study remedies, and carry information with them 
back into the mountains. This is the way actually to tackle 
their health problems. We must provide the dispensaries 
with nurses, arrange for regular visitation of them by 
physicians called in to meet stated appointments. We must 
make these dispensaries medical centers in the mountains. 

Community Houses. And while the hospitals and dis- 
pensaries are materializing, the Church must make the most 
of the medical end of its community-house work. Every 
community worker possesses a closet of medicines, gauze, 
and antiseptics and a supply of common sense. She is a 
wise administrator of common remedies and a nurse, un- 
trained though she may be, for the region round about. 
Accidents are brought to her, wounds, cases of poisoning 
such as snake bites and poison ivy. She is always the ex- 
tender of "first aid." There is not an hour in the day that 
some one fails to solicit her help in some form or other. 

Yet the community house tries to be more than that. 
In a smaller way it tries to be what the hospital and dis- 
pensary really are — a base from which instruction is given 
m the care of the sick and the prevention of disease along 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 37 

creeks and valleys where for miles and miles there is neither 
a toilet in existence nor a window screened. 

Medically here is the task of the Church: (1) To 
care for the sick of several millions of mountaineers away up 
in what Horace Kephart calls "the back of beyond," where 
surgical cases requiring immediate attention must be carried 
on stretchers over fords and rocky paths to the distant rail- 
roads. (2) To give instruction to hidden multitudes de- 
pendent upon old women's remedies, herbs, mud and manure 
poultices, and the like. (3) To teach them the clean, sani- 
tary methods of life. 

Education. The Rock of Gibraltar which ever stands 
forth unconquerable before the mountaineers is money. 
These people have just enough to employ untrained teachers 
who have not had schooling beyond the seventh grade 
primary, and sometimes not even that, the length of the 
school year being determined by the amount of money in the 
county treasury — a sum that divided among the teachers 
allows about $200 to $300 a teacher, and when spent re- 
quires the shutting up of the school for the rest of the 
year. There are seventy to one hundred children turned 
loose for nine or ten months during which they forget the 
little they have learned. 

But the Church coming to the rescue sends its workers 
over to the schoolhouse to fill out eight or nine 
months, thus saving these little folks from swelling the 
multitudes of illiterates. And when the schools are too 
poor and the teachers too ignorant, the parents of these 
children are encouraged to send them to our denominational 
schools such as Dorland Bell at Hot Springs, North Caro- 
lina, or the Pease House and the Home School at Asheville, 
from which they may go to the Normal and Collegiate 
Institute — one of the finest institutions of the South. 

To discontinue this method of procedure while the moun- 



38 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

tain people have so little money with which to run their 
schools would not alone take from them the example of a 
superior school which our Church supplies but cause cries 
of resentment and depair through a thousand ranges of the 
Southern Mountains. While there are coves where teach- 
ers do not know enough to teach beyond the fourth grade 
primary; while parents confidently tell you their children 
have learned all the teacher knows and they are helping 
their children with their books ; while there is money enough 
to keep the schools open only a few weeks in the year — the 
Church must continue to fill the breach. In the meantime 
the work of our Country Life Department is cut out for it. 
It must so encourage the use of modern methods in getting 
prosperity from the soil that these folks may some day 
say to the Boards of the Church: "Thank God for your 
help, and that through your help we are at last able to help 
ourselves." 

Religion. The churches in the Southern Mountains 
practically all belong to the emotional group. To them 
religion is feeling; it is shouting; it is a certain emotional 
experience; it is getting the Holy Spirit, standing up in 
meeting and speaking with tongues, clapping the hands, 
and stamping the feet. The further you go back into the 
mountains, the more is religion viewed as an experience of 
emotion. The work of the Church cannot halt until its 
ministers entering these valleys and coves have taught the 
mountaineers that emotion has its place in religion, but 
without life it is but "sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal." 
A sane and well-balanced religion of faith and love, a re- 
ligion not of ecstasy but of brotherhood and service — this 
is the duty and the privilege of the Presbyterian Church 
to share with the southern mountaineers. And this we are 
giving them through the intelligent unfolding of Bible 
truth in the Sunday schools which we have planted here and 



IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 39 

there, like oases in a desert of ignorance; through the whole- 
some example and ministry of doctors, teachers, and com- 
munity workers; through the sane counsel of trained pas- 
tors. 



Questions for Discussion 

1. What states are included in "the Southern Mountains"? 
how many people? of what racial origin? 

2. Why has their social progress been slow? 

3. Describe the roads of a mountain community; the 

houses; the stores; the public buildings; the schools. 

4. Describe a mountain home as to equipment and degree 

of privacy. 

5. Illustrate the school work in a mountain community 

showing the practical and financial difficulties and 
the way in which these may be overcome. 

6. How great is the need of medical work in the moun- 

tains? Make a list of the obstacles a doctor would 
have to face. To what extent could he succeed? 

7. Indicate the type of religious work among the moun- 

taineers. 

8. What other missionary projects in the Southern Moun- 

tains is the Presbyterian Church conducting? 



CHAPTER II 

AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 

(a) Mexicans in the U. S. A. 

(b) Porto Ricans 

(c) Cubans 



MEXICANS IN THE UNITED STATES 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

In Mexico the revolution which began in 1913 
brought want and desolation ; in the United States the 
World War opened doors of opportunity to the com- 
mon laborer. It was a day when railroads were pushed 
to their utmost capacity, and unnumbered miles of 
track must be kept in condition; a day when a stac- 
cato of bursting shells made copper king. 

And so into the mines of Arizona, the orchards of 
California, and the ranches of Texas, Mexicans 
swarmed in vast hordes. Behind was the urge of 
want; ahead, the lure of plenty of work at fabulous 
wages. To-day an eighth of Mexico's population is 
living under the Stars and Stripes. Added to this 
number are the thousands of contract laborers who 
come to work in the cotton camps and the beet fields, 
and return to Mexico when the crops have been 
gathered. 

The mere presence of so many foreigners is in 
itself enough of a problem; but when we consider the 
fact that a definite propaganda against Americaniza- 
tion is going on among them, the situation immedi- 
ately becomes more complex. Mazes of misunder- 
standing, dating from the War of 1848, must be re- 
moved; the clouds of suspicion and hatred must be 
dispelled; standards of living must be raised; and 
above all we must preach the Christ who enthrones 
conscience and teaches self-control. 

And the business requires haste. These people have 
changed their homes, their work, their surroundings, 
their philosophy of life. Most of them have cast 
aside their faith and their hearts are empty. Unless 
Christ can be brought into the house that is swept and 
garnished, the last state of these people will be worse 
than the £rst. 



MEXICANS IN THE UNITED STATES 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Board of Home Missions an evange- 
listic and social service work among Spanish-speaking 
people is being carried on in twenty stations in Cali- 
fornia, fifteen in Arizona, twenty-seven in New Mex- 
ico, thirteen in Colorado, and seven in Texas. For 
the efficient conduct of this work one superintendent, 
twenty-six ordained ministers, and six women workers 
are employed. A summer camp for Mexican boys is 
maintained on Catalina Island, where from fifty to 
seventy-five lads each summer are learning the better 
side of America — our ideals and our religion. 

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions, 
three boarding schools, eight day schools, one hospi- 
tal, and two medical stations are maintained. The 
boarding schools are: Allison- James School at Santa 
Fe, Menaul School at Albuquerque, and Forsythe 
Memorial School at Los Angeles. The day schools 
are: in Colorado, San Juan at Mogote; in New Mex- 
ico, Agua Negra at Holman, Alice Hyson Mission at 
Ranches of Taos, El Prado de Taos at Taos, El Rito 
at Chacon, Embudo at Dixon, John Hyson Memorial 
at Chimayo, and Truchas. The hospital is at Brook- 
lyn Cottage, Dixon, and the medical stations at Pe- 
nasco and Trementina, New Mexico. 

Through these channels the Presbyterian Church is 
reaching a few thousand Mexicans each year — but 
the Mexicans are pouring into the country by hun- 
dreds of thousands. 



Chapter II 

AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 

(a) Mexicans in the United States 

An Investment in Mexican Flesh and Blood. In- 
vestments in Mexico are not excessively popular these days. 
It requires both faith and courage to sink money into 
Mexican oil or minerals. It demands equal faith and 
courage to sink money into Mexican life and character, even 
on this side of the border. But years of acquaintanceship 
with the Mexican people have not lessened either the faith 
or the courage of our missionaries along the border. Let 
us take as a representative of them Dr Robert N. McLean 
of Los Angeles. Camp Juarez on Catalina Island was one 
of his Mexican investments. 

The Mexican situation, according to Dr. McLean, is 
about ten per cent Mexico's fault and ten per cent our 
fault; the rest is due to mutual misunderstanding. He 
established the camp on Catalina Island to help to develop 
leadership among the Mexicans. If these boys can be 
persuaded what real Americanism means, there will be less 
chance of their misunderstanding us when they are men. 

You cannot listen to Dr. McLean without feeling con- 
vinced that he knows what he is talking about. However 
differently he may see the Mexican problem from the usual 
newspaper article, you have no doubt of his sincerity and 
of his loyalty to this country. In fact, you come away 

44 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 45 

feeling that he is a far better representative of America 
than the sensational reporter who pictures Mexico as a na- 
tion of bandits. 

So great is Dr. McLean's conception of the Mexican 
problem that he is putting in his life, as his father did 
before him, trying to help solve it. From Colorado to the 
coast and all along the border, he is constantly at work 
among the 1,750,000 Mexicans in this country. He believes 
in the Mexicans. To him they are the modern counterpart 
of the Samaritans of Jesus' day. As Jesus saw the better 
nature of the Samaritan, McLean sees the better nature 
of the Mexican. Certain it is that America has in these 
people a large alien element and they can never be assimi- 
lated until we recognize the best in them and they recog- 
nize the best in us, and we make up our minds to be friends. 
Many of them are loyal to America now. The State of New 
Mexico lost more sons of Spanish blood upon the fields of 
France than of Anglo-Saxon blood. Yet there are great 
hosts of new arrivals to be assimilated. A large element 
in this population is transitory. Men come over for a few 
months or years and then return to Mexico. Many parents 
of wealthy and middle-class families are bringing their 
children to the United States for education. Thousands of 
laborers are brought over each year "in bond" to do some 
specific work. They thus avoid payment of the eight dol- 
lars per capita tax at the port of entry, but must return 
as soon as their work is completed. Every one of these 
laborers as he goes back, every one of the young students 
returning from his American education, is a missionary of 
either good or ill will to America. For better or worse 
every one of them is an ambassador. And his treatment in 
this country determines which gospel he will preach. 

The primary need has been and is for young Mexicans, 
intelligent, unselfish, devoted to their people, yet American 



46 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

in spirit and aim. They, and they only, can lead our Latin- 
Americans in the Southwest to the place in the American 
Commonwealth which they deserve. To develop young 
Mexicans of this type was the purpose of the experiment on 
Catalina Island. Over fifty young Mexicans ranging from 
twelve to twenty years of age, some from homes of poverty, 
some from homes of comfort, some from factories, and 
some from berry fields and orange groves, sailed into Avalon 
Bay and pitched their tents along the beach on the lee- 
ward side of the island. Dr. McLean had had some fear 
that the Mexican boys would not enjoy camping. The 
love of the out of doors is not rooted in them as it is in 
Anglo-Saxons. They had been wont instead to find their 
pleasures in theaters and dance halls of cities and towns. 
But the fear proved groundless and though this was the 
first camp in this country ever conducted exclusively for 
Mexican boys, and though camping was an entirely novel 
experience to them, their enjoyment was as keen and their 
spirit as dauntless as that of experienced campers. 

The call for a morning dip roused them from their blan- 
kets at 6.00 a.m. Dressing, flag-raising, setting-up drill, and 
breakfast followed in rapid succession. 

After breakfast an hour was allowed for camp duties; 
one tent was given the privilege of washing the dishes, 
another of gathering and chopping wood for the cook. 

Inspection coming at ten o'clock was the great event of 
the morning. For some time beforehand, the boys had been 
engaged in sweeping every speck of dirt from the canvas 
floor of the tent, reefing its walls tightly and smartly, 
clearing the surrounding ground of all bits of wood, string, 
and rubbish, cleaning the lantern and transforming their 
beds into tight and wrinkleless blanket rolls. 

The morning swim came at eleven o'clock. An efficient 
camp life-saving corps, patrolling in a skiff and upon the 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 47 

beach, forestalled any possibility of accident. Swimming 
lessons, races on the beach, speed and endurance tests passed 
the time, and a general protest always greeted the recall 
whistle. Once out of the water the prospect of dinner called, 
and clothes were speedily hustled on under the spur of a 
camp appetite. Following dinner came the siesta time, 
when the boys were encouraged to write letters home, and to 
read. The Los Angeles Library had furnished a collection 
of forty books — volumes of biography, nature study, and 
science, as well as stories such as "Tom Sawyer" and 
"Treasure Island." 

Baseball games, played as hotly and as vociferously as by 
any young Americans, track meets, and hikes made up the 
afternoon program. Their ball games required a man of no 
little courage as umpire. And they carried their hikes 
through with that grit and perseverance which we sometimes 
like to think we monopolize as Anglo-Saxon. Twenty boys 
started out for Black Jack, the second highest peak on the 
island; it was a hike which shortened the breath and dried 
the mouth and sapped the strength of the hardiest. Yet 
twenty boys started and twenty boys reached the summit. 
Not one proved a loafer or a quitter. 

Thus far this camp was very much like any other camp. 
It had the same love of sport, and the same aversion to dish- 
washing. But there was something in the spirit of the 
leaders of this camp, and in their purpose and method, 
that made it different, as the following incident will show. 

The boys had enjoyed a hearty dinner, climaxed with ice 
cream, and had just finished their letters home. It was 
one of those lazy afternoons that all camp leaders dread — 
where homesickness develops and anarchy is bred. Sud- 
denly came the announcement: "Boys, at five o'clock we're 
going to have a program in which each tent will act out 
a Bible story. And to the tent producing the best stunt 



48 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

will go as a prize an extra feed of ice cream." The effect 
of the last words was magical. Immediately the camp 
was all activity. Yonder on the beach, a group of 
boys was embarking in the skiff to collect kelp for 
costumes; others were raising an altar upon the sand, 
the foundation of which was an old water cask. The rub- 
bish heap and the outdoor kitchen were being ransacked for 
ancient buckets, wash-boiler tops, and pasteboard cartons 
from which to fashion armor. Here a number of boys were 
draping themselves Oriental fashion in blankets and sheets, 
their heads decked with towels for turbans. Gradually the 
activity concentrated, and at various points around the camp 
could be seen knots of boys diligently rehearsing their parts. 

The hour of five arrived. The sun, still high in the 
heavens, provided ample lighting facilities; the scenery for 
each act was chosen with care, and the audience accommo- 
datingly took seats wherever the natural background best 
provided a setting for the act. If the desert was desired, it 
distributed its members on the sand; if the wilderness or 
mountains, it followed the players to a near-by hill; if the 
seashore, it ranged itself along the surf-lined rim of the 
ocean. 

Those Bible stories were nothing if not vivid. The cos- 
tuming was ingenious, the acting spontaneous; an element 
of humor and a slight touch of the ludicrous were evident 
now and then. But the spirit of the presentation was 
reverent. The choice of stories ranged from Genesis to the 
Gospels. Included in the program was the story of Cain 3 
envy and murder of Abel (the modern touch being supplied 
by the weapon of offense, a baseball bat) ; of David's con- 
quest over the giant Goliath; of the dance of the daughter 
of Herodias before Herod for her gruesome reward; of the 
journey of the Good Samaritan and his mercy toward the 
beaten (realistically indeed on this occasion) traveler; of 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 49 

Abraham's excursion to Mount Moriah for the sacrifice of 
his son, Isaac. 

With true boyish vim and vigor, each one of these 
stories was produced. But the ice-cream prize was carried off 
by the story of that contest on Mount Carrnel between Elijah 
and the prophets of Baal. An altar had been reared. 
Around it gathered the prophets of Baal, clad only in tur- 
ban and breechcloth. Bowed upon their knees, lifting their 
arms supplicatingly to heaven they cried, "Baal, responde- 
nos! Baal respondenos ! " (Baal, hear us! Baal, hear us!) 
But their prayers were in vain ; no fire from heaven appeared 
to consume their sacrifice. Elijah, clad in the white gar- 
ments of the prophet, stood by and mockingly commanded: 
"Cry aloud, for he is a god. Perhaps he is musing, or he 
is on a journey; or it may be that he is asleep and must be 
awakened." Frenzy seized upon the heathen priests; they 
leaped around the altar; knives flashed in the sunlight, and 
from their edges, coated with crimson paint, there appeared 
staring red gashes upon the arms and shoulders and breasts 
of the devotees. But at last voice and energy failed. No 
answer had come, and they were defeated. 

It was now the turn of Elijah. Quietly? with twelve stones 
for the twelve tribes of Israel, he built his altar; twelve 
containers of water he poured over it (American tin cups 
taking the place of Oriental jars). Then he knelt to pray, 
when suddenly a flash as of lightning blazed upon the altar. 
And as the smoke of the flash light drifted away, the children 
of Israel fell upon their faces exclaiming, "The Lord, he is 
God! the Lord, he is God!" 

After supper came camp fire and a glorious "sing." Tir- 
ing temporarily of this, the boys called for the "Bug," a 
swinging, crashing bit of barbaric harmony on the mandolin 
and guitar. Then came calls for Theda Bara (thus had 
Filiberto with the clear tenor voice received his camp nick- 



50 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

name). "La Paloma," he sang with its intoxicating rhythm, 
or the dreamy passionate "La Golandrina," or others of the 
haunting, lingering Spanish melodies. Quiet was settling 
upon the boys; the fire had burned into a bed of coals 
which cast but a dusky glow upon the circle of faces. It 
was a time when every listener was receptive and impressions 
for a lifetime might be made. Then from one of the leaders 
there came a short talk touching on the struggles which every 
boy and young man, be he American or Mexican, must face. 
A closing song and the evening was over. 

Thus the days passed, the boys breathing in at the same 
time American air and American ideals, adding to them- 
selves strength of body and mind and soul. Twice every 
day at reveille and at retreat, they stood at attention and 
saluted the American flag. Constantly were they in the 
company of the young Americans, their leaders. And in 
those few days perhaps more of the real meaning of the 
American character and spirit came to them than in all the 
previous months or years of their residence within our 
borders. 

Of the camp boys, two will serve their people as ministers, 
one as an engineer, two as physicians, two or three perhaps 
as teachers. But what of the remaining twoscore or more 
boys? The years alone can tell. A friendly influence en- 
tered their lives and lives are sometimes transformed by 
friendship. In 1877, m central Mexico, there was born a 
lad of Indian blood, Doroteo Arango, whom friendship seems 
to have passed by. Instead his youth was embittered by the 
murder of an official who had outraged his sister. He be- 
came an outlaw and took the name of Villa. And for years 
he has been a menace not only in Mexico, but to the peace 
of all America as well. In 1806, there was born in southern 
Mexico, another lad of Indian blood, Benito Juarez. Left 
an orphan at the age of four, he found a friend in a 




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AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 51 

charitable merchant, who fostered and educated him. And 
rich dividends did the merchant's friendly care return. For 
Juarez, after a term as governor of his native state, Oaxaca, 
left it the most prosperous in the country. He led his 
people in their successful struggle against the French and 
Maximilian. Thrice was he elected President of the Repub- 
lic. And even now, almost five decades after his death, he 
still lives in the mind of the Mexican peon as "The Great 
Liberator." 

"I hope," said Dr. McLean, "that we can turn these lives 
from the path of Villa to the path of Juarez." 

The Plaza Schools. The camp on Catalina Island last 
summer was our latest experiment in Mexican work. Several 
years ago, in the same pioneering spirit, the Presbyterian 
Church established as an experiment a small day school for 
Mexican children in a remote settlement in New Mexico 
where educational opportunities were lacking. As late as 
1872 there was but one public school in New Mexico. The 
experiment was such a success that it was soon extended to 
other isolated communities and to-day there are seven of 
these "plaza" schools in that state. In most of these schools 
the course of instruction covers five to eight grades. In 
some cooking, sewing, and manual training are taught in 
addition to the regular course; in all the Bible is studied. 
A tuition fee of from twenty-five to thirty-five cents a month 
in charged for each pupil, and a load of wood required from 
each family. 

Although these schools are small and all together do not 
reach more than four hundred boys and girls in a year, their 
influence is very real, not only on the boys and girls them- 
selves but on the community in which they are located. One 
community last year rallied to help in the building of a 
community house in connection with the day school — fifty- 
two days of volunteer work were given, 300 loads of stone 



52 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

were hauled free for the foundation and the walls. With 
such a contribution the people of the community feel that 
it is their house and whole families spend evening after 
evening there. Another community has been taught to play. 
A wide-awake missionary seeing the real need of recreation 
and its educational value, secured apparatus and opened a 
playground. As a consequence the entire town is interested 
— and plays. After four o'clock when the playground is 
open to the public, men of all ages and sizes may be seen on 
the "slide and stride." In another plaza new and large 
windows cut in heretofore solid adobe walls show that the 
talks on fresh air and value of sunshine have been heeded. 

More encouraging even than the changes in the com- 
munity, is the fact that the boys and girls are being led to 
desire and seek education further. Five years ago not a 
girl in the school at Chimayo had finished eighth-grade work. 
This year the mission reported twenty-one of its pupils 
away at boarding school. Of the pupils of the El Rito 
School, Chacon, in recent years, eleven are now taking ad- 
vanced educational work elsewhere, two are in the ministry, 
four are teachers, and one is in the United States Navy. 

Young people graduating from these plaza schools, 
which are elementary, are encouraged to continue their work 
in the Menaul School (for boys) at Albuquerque, the 
Forsythe Memorial School (for girls) at Los Angeles, or at 
the Allison James School at Santa Fe. 

Unfinished Business : Educational. But fine as these 
schools are, their total enrollment is a few hundred, and there 
are literally hundreds of thousands of boys and girls who 
ought to have the same opportunities. Moreover none of 
these schools provides more than high-school training. The 
net result of this is that none trains as completely as it 
should for Christian leadership. In all of our work in the 
Southwest we have not a single worker trained by any of 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 53 

these girls' schools. We need schools to begin where these 
leave off and to give the college and specialized training 
that will prepare native leadership for Christian work. 

Social Work Needed. Until recently when we wanted 
to bring the inspiration of a living Christianity to these 
people it has been our custom to rent a hall, employ a 
minister, hang out a sign, and begin preaching the gospel 
to those who would come. Battering down the walls of 
superstition, prejudice, and ignorance was slow and uphill 
work by this method, for thousands of the very people 
who most needed our message would not come into these 
halls, most of which were dark and dingy and altogether un- 
attractive. So we have opened up "Homes of Neighborly 
Service." We rent a house in the Mexican quarter, locate 
in it a social worker, a woman of broad sympathy and quick 
understanding of the needs of the people. The social worker 
begins by regenerating her own house and making a model 
home of it. Then she visits the Mexican women and invites 
them to come to her house at pre-arranged hours for the 
study of the English language. The women are eager to 
come. The very environment of the home teaches the gos- 
pel of home-making. To the English lessons are added other 
courses in home-making, marketing, care of babies, sanita- 
tion, personal hygiene. In some homes clinics are held, and 
day nurseries, and various forms of recreational activities. 
These homes are so popular that we must have more of them. 
They are actually reaching the people with practical Christ- 
ianity and true Americanism. We could put in at least a 
hundred such homes now if we had the means. 

Religious Work Fundamental. During the past few 
years the heart of the Church has been touched as never 
before by her social responsibility, and this awakening has 
been reflected in our Mexican work. Formerly we simply 
rented halls or erected adobe huts; and if we had a bell we 



54 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

rang it, and invited men to come and listen to the preaching 
of the gospel. They did not come — that is, in any large 
numbers. Then we built schools and worked with the young. 
We erected settlement houses and interpreted the gospel 
of Christ through the touch of the social worker. So much 
have we been interested in the bodies of men that when 
we established a dental clinic in Los Angeles for the Mexi- 
cans the daily press exclaimed in surprised headlines: 
"Church goes into the business of pulling teeth." 

But we must not lose sight of the fact that ultimately a 
ministry to the bodies of men is secondary to the ministry 
of saving their souls. There is no piece of social work in 
the Mexican field which is not tied up to either a Sunday 
school or a church. The marvelous stories of spiritual re- 
generation which have refreshed the Church coming from 
Korea and Africa, are duplicated on a smaller scale in our 
Mexican churches at El Paso and in Los Angeles. During 
the calendar year 1920 no less than 100 members were added 
to the El Paso church upon confession of faith. Men and 
women listen to the message with a heart hunger which is 
appealing. During the fiscal year of 19 19 and 1920, the 
gross advance in our Mexican churches was twenty-five per 
cent. In every real work of Americanization among the 
Mexican people, the preaching of those eternal principles 
which lie at the foundation of our American life is of the 
utmost importance. 

The missionary enthusiasm of the Mexican people makes 
possible the success which attends the preaching of our 
ministers. A converted Mexican goes out to win his friends 
just as did those men who so long ago first came to know 
and love their Lord. During the past year an Indian 
Mexican in California who was as bitter as Saul of Tarsus 
in his persecution of those who were "of the Way," has been 
won to a knowledge of the truth. Like Paul before his con- 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 55 

version, so he has been like Paul since his conversion. He 
can neither read nor write, and he works with pick and 
shovel in a section gang of Mexican laborers. Each day at 
the noon hour, when the men sit down among the imple- 
ments of their toil to eat their luncheons, he draws a Span- 
ish testament from his pocket, and says something like 
this: "I have here a little book, but I cannot read. Will 
some one do me the favor of reading to me?" 

It is difficult for anyone raised in a Protestant country to 
realize how barren these lives are of fellowship with a liv- 
ing God. Their Christ is a dead Christ. The only religion 
they have been taught is a religion of rite and ritual, form 
and ceremony. The end of all our work must be to make 
God a living reality in their lives — a comrade and friend. 
All the Protestant churches together thus far have enrolled 
only 10,018 and a Sunday-school membership of 11,023 
among the more than one and three-quarter million Mexi- 
cans in this country. We must find ways of reaching 
the rest. Seventy-five per cent of them can neither 
read nor write. Hundreds of thousands of them will 
go back to Mexico. Every one of them is a potential friend 
of America or a potential enemy. We must make them 
friends and there is no better way than to make them true 
Christians. Those that stay here we must assimilate into 
our American life and we would not be true to the ideals 
of the founders of this country nor to our faith as Christians 
if we did not try to meet them as brothers and share with 
them our blessings as well as our labor. 

What You Can Do to Help. Give your sympathy, 
your interest, your money, and your prayers, and remember 
always to think of Mexicans, not as bandits or unworthy 
people, but as fellow human beings, children of the same 
God. They have not had your opportunities, but they have 
great possibilities and they need your friendship. 



56 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

A remarkable fraternization service between a Mexican 
congregation and an American congregation was held in the 
Emmanuel Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles some months 
ago. There were present about 250 Mexicans and probably 
twice that number of Americans. The hymns were sung 
antiphonally, the Americans singing the first verse in Eng- 
lish, the Mexicans singing the second verse in Spanish, and 
so on. When the time for the sermon came the Mexican 
pastor addressed his congregation in their own tongue and 
this was the burden of his address: "I have heard you 
speak of this city saying it is not the 'city of angels' but a 
city of devils, for there are those here who oppress you and 
scorn you and treat you as though you were not human. In 
the future when you speak of Americans do not think of 
those who do such things, but rather of Christian Americans 
like these who have invited us to worship with them in this 
service." Then it came time for the American pastor to 
address his own congregation. "When you think of Mexi- 
cans," he said "do not think of a few who rob and steal 
and kill. Unfortunately there are a few Americans who do 
that sort of thing, too. But think of Christian Mexicans like 
these, your brothers." 

The spirit of that service will solve the Mexican problem, 
and until we have that spirit the problem will not be solved. 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 57 



Questions for Discussion 

1. How many Mexicans are there in the United States? 

How recently have they arrived? What is their 
attitude toward the United States? 

2. Describe the camp on Catalina Island. Note the 

number present; the daily schedule; the Bible dram- 
atization contest program. What is the value of the 
camp? 

3. What kinds of schools are particularly needed among 

the Mexicans? Why? Describe the Plaza Schools, 
their purpose and curricula. 

4. What are the "Homes of Neighborly Service"? 

5. What needs to be done in a religious way for the 

Mexicans? 

6. Indicate the right attitude of Americans toward 

Mexicans. 



PORTO RICANS 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

Porto Rico is said to be more responsive to the 
message of the gospel than any other country in 
Latin America. But until the American intervention 
in i8gg the type of religion that ffourished on the 
island was inclined to be one of rigid formalism with 
a naive separation between religion and morality that 
did not tend to improve the quality or influence of 
either. 

What is needed is a dynamic gospel message if the 
people of Porto Rico are to become Christians in 
more than name. 

In rgi8 the island adopted prohibition by a vote of 
nearly 2 to 1, the inEuence of Protestant pastors and 
workers being a powerful factor in securing this re- 
sult. 

Through the schools, the press, and other in£uences, 
loyalty to America is rapidly developing. As the 
average of intelligence rises the demand for thor- 
oughly trained ministers and leaders increases. More 
adequate facilities for training and supporting such 
must be provided. 

Most of the Porto Ricans live in one-room thatched 
huts in small agricultural villages and are mostly in 
a state of poverty. 

The first census taken after the American occupa- 
tion in 1899 showed that eighty-three per cent of the 
population was illiterate. American supervised public 
schools which now enroll 175.000 children have greatly 
improved this condition for the younger men and wo- 
men of Porto Rico and for the rising generation. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



PORTO RICANS 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions a 
splendid hospital is being maintained at San Juan. It 
is the £nest hospital on the island and is constantly 
setting new standards of health and hygiene as well 
as of methods of treatment of disease and wounds. 
Seventeen workers are commissioned in the hospital 
and thirty nurses enrolled in the Nurses' Training 
School connected with it. Last year the hospital 
ministered to 977 bed patients and 27,813 dispensary 
patients. Nine hundred and forty-one operations were 
performed. 

Community stations are maintained at Mayaguez 
and Aquadilla, employing all told eighteen commis- 
sioned workers and enrolling 216 Sunday-school pu- 
pils, and at Mayaguez rendering a public-health serv- 
ice to 1500 patients. 

Through the Board of Home Missions important 
evangelistic work is being conducted through 30 
churches engaging 33 ministers. In addition to this 
the Board is cooperating in the development of the 
Polytechnic Institute, the leading educational institu- 
tion on the island and profoundly influencing the 
whole social life of the Antilles. 

A splendid beginning — but only a beginning. The 
goal — an educated Christian democracy — is still far 
distant. 



(b) Porto Ricans 

Porto Rico, open to Protestant influence only since the 
American occupation in 1898, has made remarkable progress 
in every phase of its insular life. Porto Rico did not wait 
for a constitutional amendment for prohibition, but voted 
for it two years before the United States went dry. It 
did not wait for Church union but with mutual agreement 
made an apportionment of the island among denominations 
and closing her seminaries united them in one interdenomina- 
tional school where the young men are trained for any one 
of half a dozen different Protestant Churches. 

In three particulars the Presbyterian Church is rendering 
service to the million and a quarter of its inhabitants. 

1. The Hospital at San Juan. A leading Porto Rican 
when asked what was America's greatest contribution to the 
island, replied without hesitation, "The San Juan Hospital." 
It is the finest hospital in the insular province. It was 
erected and is maintained by the Woman's Board. Porto 
Rico has a very healthful climate, yet its people are ill much 
of the time, their diseases arising from lack of nutrition, bad 
housing, and neglect of the laws of sanitation. There are 
approximately 1,118,000 people in Porto Rico, yet it is said 
that probably eighty per cent are victims of the hookworm 
disease. Ignorance and poverty are additional factors in 
increasing the death rate and in making medical work a 
most important and needed form of missionary activity. 
Moreover, as in other communities where a hospital is an in- 
novation, most people do not seek its care until their ail- 
ments have reached a dangerous stage. But when Porto 
Ricans are badly off and need the best of medical care and 
treatment, they cast longing eyes from every part of the 

60 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 61 

island toward the Presbyterian Hospital at San Juan and use 
any and every means of getting there — automobile, horse- 
back, pushcart, a chair carried by friends, or even a pair 
of crutches. They come to the hospital in just such ways 
as they came to Jesus, determined to receive help even 
though it requires letting down through the housetop. 

The new hospital building, completed in 19 17, has had 
its capacity taxed to the utmost. Its 70 beds have been kept 
filled and there is a constant and long waiting list. In 19 19, 
977 patients were treated in the hospital beds, and 941 oper- 
ations were performed. Two hundred patients throng the 
dispensary in the afternoon. More than 30,000 come under 
the care of the nurses and physicians in a single year. 

Along with the medical care goes helpful religious influ- 
ence. There is Scripture reading and prayer in the wards 
and in the clinic. Every Monday morning the pastor of the 
Presbyterian Church in Santurce holds a service which is 
usually well attended. On Sunday afternoon there is a 
friendly religious talk in each ward. Many of the patients 
take gospels or tracts to their homes. 

The Nurses' Training School, in connection with the 
hospital, ministers to one of the great needs of Porto Rico. 
It was the pioneer school of its kind on the island and its 
graduates may be found in some of the most responsible 
nursing positions. The demand for these graduates has 
always exceeded the supply. There are now in training in 
the nurses' school thirty Porto Rican girls. The supervising 
and teaching staff are all graduates of the school and many 
patients who have been in the hospitals in the States testify 
that the standards of discipline and efficiency are equal 
to those of the hospitals in the States. Since the demand for 
nurses exceeds the supply, the Woman's Board is hoping to 
enlarge the training school. It is also planning to take in 
a number of young women to train not only for hospital 



62 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

work but for public-health service, district nursing, and 
other missionary work. 

Evidences of Appreciation. A man from St. Thomas 
Island came into the hospital offices one day and in speak- 
ing of the indifference of many of the Porto Rican doctors 
said, "If the doctors of this island would take a lesson 
of generosity, charity, and Christianity from this hospital, 
the poor Porto Rican people would not be trodden upon 
and die by the hundreds from lack of proper care." 

A patient said, "I knew that nurses were useful but I did 
not understand their real value until I came to this hospital." 

A doctor's testimony is, "As a member of the Board of Ex- 
aminers, I can certify that the majority of nurses who 
pass the examinations yearly come from the Presbyterian 
Hospital." 

Spiritual Manifestations. The religious work is ap- 
preciated along with the medical. Our missionary writes: 
"I must not fail to make my rounds in the wards every day, 
to read the Bible, and talk to the patients, for when I went 
in this morning after an absence of three days, with one 
accord, in both the men's and women's wards, they said: 'Oh, 
you have not been in to read the Bible to us for such a 
long time. Please come every day.' " 

2. The Polytechnic Institute. Some months ago the 
editor of the New York Herald was in Porto Rico and 
visited the Polytechnic Institute. When he returned to the 
States he wrote the following editorial in his paper: 

Perhaps the most significant fact just now in the prog- 
ress of Porto Rico is the swift and somewhat astonishing 
development of a great institution for the higher education, 
both academic and technical, near San German, in the south- 
western part of the Island. In one of the most beautiful 
hill-surrounded sites which the imagination can conceive — 
a tropical version of Williamstown, Massachusetts, with a 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 63 

climate that without irreverence may be described as heav- 
enly — there is growing with tropical rapidity the future 
University of the Antilles, the school at present known as 
the Polytechnic Institute of Porto Rico. Its destiny is as 
obvious as its history is amazing. It promises to be for 
the long future the source of culture and the central seat 
of the liberal arts not only for Porto Rico but for other 
Antillean Islands and for a considerable part of Latin 
Central and South America. 

It happens that it was just one year ago to-day that 
the Legislature of Porto Rico conferred upon the existing 
school at San German the full university functions. Under 
the auspices of the Presbyterian Board the school had been 
opened seven years before with a single student on its rolls. 
Under the direction of Rev. J. W. Harris, a Texan of 
large vision, indomitable energy, and a very remarkable 
practical faculty for realizing ideals, it has already become 
a university in the true sense, occupying a campus of 120 
acres with an adequate scheme of future physical develop- 
ment already matured by the architects to whose aesthetic 
perceptions New York owes the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monu- 
ment on Riverside Drive ; and it is affording through compe- 
tent professional teachers a thorough education, both aca- 
demic and technical, to nearly 300 students of both sexes. 
The promise of the institution and the quick recognition of 
its importance to the future of the Caribbean people is 
shown, perhaps better than in any other way, by the cir- 
cumstance that nearly four times as many students as are 
admitted are turned away from San German because of 
present lack of housing facilities. 

The plan of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto Rico, that 
is to say, the University of the Antilles of the future, con- 
templates buildings which accommodate 1200 boarding stu- 
dents and their teachers, at a cost of $2,000,000, and an 
endowment of $6,000,000 for the same. Among all the 
college and university drives now on, and their name is 
legion and their respective claims are indisputable, none is 
urged more worthily than this from down amid the royal 
palms. Certainly none appeals more directly to sympathetic 
imagination alive to the possibilities of Latin American de- 
veloDment, and concerned, for reasons either of philanthropy 



64 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

or of American patriotism, or, again, of enlightened selfish- 
ness, that Porto Rico shall have every opportunity which 
northern good will and generous northern pockets can afford. 



The daily program of the Institute will reveal the general 
character of the work done. 

ONE DAY'S LIFE IN THE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE OF 
PORTO RICO 

5.30 a.m. First Bell — All students get up. 

5.45 a.m. Second Bell. 

5.55 a.m. Third Bell — All aboard for dining hall. 

6.00-6.30 a.m. Breakfast. Girls cook and serve all meals 
in a main dining room. 

6.30-7.00 a.m. Morning prayers. At this service daily 
readings are assigned so as to complete 
the entire Bible during the year. 

7.15 a.m. The lower grades of grammar and high-school 
classes report for work. The boys do all 
the farm, house, and road building work 
and the girls take care of their own 
house, wash, and iron for the whole 
school, and cook and serve all the meals. 

8.00 a.m. The more advanced classes of grammar and 
high school begin classroom work. 

12.00 Noon. Dinner is served. 

1. 00 p.m. Students who were in the classroom during the 
morning report for work while those who 
worked their three hours during morning 
come to class work. 

4.00 p.m. Students are free until supper time. They spend 
these two hours in play or study, as they 
choose. 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 65 

6.00 p.m. Supper time. 

6.30 p.m. Recreation in walking and talking. 

7.00 p.m. Study, in preparation for next day's classes, be- 
gins. Those whose daily average is 85 
per cent or more are allowed to study 
in their rooms. All others have to come 
to study halls where they study under 
the direction of teachers. 

9.15 p.m. First Bell for retiring. 

9.25 p.m. Second Bell for retiring. 

9.30 p.m. Third Bell. All lights out and students are in 
bed and quiet. 

The Polytechnic Institute is doing three worth-while 
things for the Porto Rican people. 

(a) It is teaching the dignity of labor. Born in the Porto 
Rican from Spanish traditions is the idea that labor is a 
misfortune meant only for those of whom it is required by 
necessity. The Polytechnic Institute has met this stubborn 
prejudice by requiring that its students devote three hours 
a day to the manual labor which must needs be done in 
the institution and about the grounds, the boys employed 
in the construction of Institute buildings (all the buildings 
being done by student labor), caring for the garden produce 
and "finca" or farm work, the girls using their required 
hours of work in cooking, sewing, caring for the laundry, 
and so on. 

About sixty per cent cannot pay tuition, and only about 
twenty-five per cent meet all their own expenses through 
supporting parents, but all must work, rich and poor alike, 
no allowance being made for the labor, it being considered 
as part of their training — the surprising feature of which 
is that the students offer no objection whatever, whether 
they break stone, carry mortar, plant sugar cane, or wash 



66 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

dishes. "The head, the heart, the hand" — are all well 
educated at San German, and that the last is not least in 
consideration has brought the Institute under the most 
enthusiastic approval of all educators in Porto Rico. 

(b) It is helping to solve the question of sex. In Porto 
Rico the minds of men are erotic, so the sexes are usually 
separated. Some churches recognizing this situation seat 
their men on one side and their women on the other side of 
their auditoriums. 

The Polytechnic Institute, following the policy of all our 
Porto Rican missions, recognizes the need of meeting this 
problem with straightforward Christian teaching, expecting 
its pupils to be Christians in thought and deed, ignoring 
the unnatural limitations of the past, and they have not had 
the slightest trouble. It has the distinction of being the 
only dormitory school on a coeducational basis in Latin 
America. 

(c) It is helping to meet the need of education. In no 
school in the island is there a better course of study — a 
truth verified by the fact that for three years consecutively 
the graduates of San German in taking teachers' examina- 
tions received marks superior to those of any high school on 
the island. A college course will be started when the neces- 
sary recitation halls have been erected. Already students 
having heard of San German have come from points as far 
distant as Santo Domingo and Colombia, and with the 
equipment which is being gradually supplied, this institu- 
tion bids fair to do a great work not only for Porto Rico but 
for the whole of the West Indies. 

3. Churches and Mission Houses. Again the Presby- 
terian Church is rendering a service to Porto Rico through 
its churches and neighborhood houses, such as those at 
Aguadilla and Mayaguez. Through the churches the gospel 
is brought to the people, and through the neighborhood 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 67 

houses the workers showing the people by precept and ex- 
ample how to live, add to their usefulness by teaching lace- 
making, embroidery, basket-weaving, and drawn work, arts 
in which Porto Ricans are especially adept. Let us take for 
example the Marina Missions at Mayaguez. 

The Community Work at Mayaguez. Picture the 
scene: a densely populated triangular two acres of one-story 
houses along the coast, broiling under a tropical sun. Living 
conditions among the two hundred and fifty people that 
crowd this triangle are about as bad as they can be. Often 
several families live in a house that is really too small for 
one family. There are no conveniences of civilized life and 
practically no sanitation. Such is the setting of the Marina 
Mission in Mayaguez. 

The mission conducts a church under the care of a 
Porto Rican pastor and near the church the Marina Neigh- 
borhood House. The Neighborhood House shelters an in- 
dustrial school, a kindergarten, and a day nursery and is 
the headquarters for a visiting nurse. The industrial school 
has organized the Porto Rican girls of the neighborhood 
under the direction of a capable instructor who teaches them 
to make drawn work and embroidery. The beauty of this 
handwork is said to be unsurpassed. The girls are paid and 
the product is sold throughout the United States. Each 
morning the industrial school begins with a Bible lesson. 
Other lessons are introduced as the work permits. The 
kindergarten and primary work are very much like that in 
any American settlement house with the exception that the 
week-day work of the Neighborhood House is more closely 
allied with the Church than that of the usual settlement 
house. 

The day nursery of this mission would of itself justify 
the whole undertaking. The community is desperately poor 
and every woman who can must "work out" day after day 



68 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

leaving her children at home. Since the establishment of 
the day nursery the children are left at the Neighborhood 
House and are cared for by two faithful Porto Rican women 
until the mothers return at night. 

The visiting nurse cares for the cases that come to the 
mission and then goes out to the community, visiting the 
sick, relieving pain, and bringing cheer wherever she goes. 
The needs that challenge her and the difficulties that must 
be overcome are illustrated in this typical instance. Not 
long ago she answered a call to attend a sick child. She 
found the child and its mother in a little eight by ten room 
surrounded by twelve other persons who had come in 
mistaken kindness or in thoughtless curiosity and were tak- 
ing the air which the child so much needed. The child was 
gasping for breath. 

Unfinished Tasks. Thus the Church is one of the 
great factors in the making over of an old civilization into 
a modern Christian land. These are results which have 
been accomplished; what remains then to be done? Well, 
what is it that seems never done in a Roman Catholic coun- 
try? What is it that is so hard to get deep down in the 
subconscious parts of a Romanist's life? Those who have 
labored among them instantly reply: A true understanding 
of the real nature of Christianity. The temperance question 
you can solve, political questions you can settle, but here is 
a problem ever before the Church — to show a people priest- 
ridden for over four centuries, what Christianity is. 

It is this which makes our work in Porto Rico a work of 
patience; but we have no cause to complain, the work has 
been just started, and we mean to speak to these people and 
keep speaking to them in the only language that they can 
understand, the language of human conduct, the language of 
unselfish deeds, the language of broad, wholesome institu- 
tions which lift the multitudes until they realize that Chris- 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 69 

tianity is not a system of rites, but a kind of life to be 
lived here and now — a life that seeks to reproduce the 
spirit and the purpose and the method of Jesus. 

Finish the Polytechnic Institute. So it becomes clear 
to us that in line with revealing to Porto Rico what the 
nature of Christianity is, the school at San German which 
when completed will be a center of much needed illumination 
in Porto Rico must be pushed steadily forward. Six dormi- 
tories for boys, six for girls; five recitation halls, a library, 
administration buildings, a domestic science hall, a manual- 
training shop, a teachers' home — how like music it all falls 
upon Porto Rican ears ! — people who have had only the 
crudest and most elementary schools, now given modern 
equipment; scores who were once unsuccessful applicants, 
now enrolled in the student body soon to be happy in their 
pursuit of knowledge. 

And with a hospital containing 175 beds and a force of 
trained nurses, not only will the Polytechnic Institute be an 
educational power but a medical center, a hospital for the 
entire western end of the island. No greater blessing could 
possibly be bestowed upon that beautiful isle. Let us finish 
the task. 

An Independent Church in Porto Rico. One other 
and no less important task remains, that of making the 
Church independent. The Porto Ricans are planning a 
general increase in their contributions to gain financial inde- 
pendence in ten years. If they succeed they may be the 
first missionary population to do it, and again this small 
island will be a trail maker. The more difficult work is that 
of producing a native ministry that is so thoroughly evangeli- 
cal as to be trusted with independence. 

Porto Ricans can preach; by their oratorical gifts they 
can keep the attention of a crowd when the American with 
no such pyrotechnics will utterly lose out, but it is so diffi- 



70 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

cult for those who have known only the priesthood to under- 
stand what is required of a consecrated Christian minister: 
Unconsciously, in becoming pastors they feel after priestly 
authority, love the place of significance, are somewhat 
materialistic, and can rarely stand the test of discipleship 
which demands a willingness to suffer, to be humble, self- 
forgetful in pastoral as well as pulpit service. Do not blame 
them; these are the heritage of Romanism, but with in- 
creased earnestness turn your support toward the faculty of 
the Evangelical Seminary, and pray God that in the training 
of these promising young men, the older men may so reveal 
God that like Paul they may ever retain the vision and, 
with that fine enthusiasm of which the Porto Rican is so 
capable, preach the living God to the multitudes. 




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AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 71 



Questions for Discussion 

1. What is the population of Porto Rico? How long 

has it belonged to the United States? What in- 
dependent sign of progressive spirit has it already 
displayed? 

2. Describe the Hospital at San Juan as to size, medical 

and religious service. What is the value of its 
Nurses* Training School? 

3. When was the Polytechnic Institute at San German 

established? What is its present enrollment? Its 
equipment? Sketch its daily program. Indicate its 
threefold importance. 

4. What religious work is being done in Porto Rico? Why 

is it difficult to show Porto Ricans what Christianity 
really is? 

5. Describe the community work at Mayaguez. Why 
should the Church conduct such work? 

6. What is being done to develop a reliable native min- 

istry? Why is this a difficult task? 

7. What is the first thing to be done along educational 

lines in the immediate future? 



CUBANS 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The population of Cuba is approximately 2,500,000. 
Of these seventy per cent are white, thirteen per cent 
Negroes, sixteen per cent mixed, and the rest are yel- 
low. Cuba is the richest of the West Indies. 

Millions of dollars of American capital are invested 
in Cuban sugar plantations. How much will the 
Christians of America invest in uplifting the lives of 
the Cuban people? 

Gambling and impurity are Cuba's national vices. 
Her people are naturally temperate as to the use of 
intoxicants, but American brewers have undertaken 
to overcome this by the introduction of beer "kinder- 
gartens." 

Cuba has school facilities for only half of her 
600,000 children. In the cities 49.9 per cent of the 
children attend school; in the country districts 3r.6 
per cent. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



CUBANS 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions 
nine day schools are conducted teaching the underly- 
ing principles of Christian democracy. These schools 
are at Guines, Nueva Paz, Sancti Spiritus, Caibarien, 
Camajuani, Placetas, Cabaiguan, Vedado, and Cardenas. 
The total enrollment at these nine schools last year 
was 1337. Fifty-two commissioned workers were en- 
gaged to teach and care for them. In the Sunday 
schools connected with these day schools 627 scholars 
were enrolled. 

Through the Board of Home Missions thirty-three 
missionary centers (only eleven church buildings) 
are being maintained to make ignorance give place to 
enlightenment, fear to faith, and a dead Christ to a 
living One. 

Until these schools and churches are properly 
equipped and manned our progress in the cities of 
Cuba will be slow. And as for the great rural dis- 
tricts, they are still untouched. 



(c) Cubans 

After twenty years of work in Cuba the Presbyterian 
Church faces a new epoch. The Disciples of Christ and the 
Southern Assembly of the Presbyterian Church have with- 
drawn and requested us to continue and enlarge their work. 
This important territory having the three greatest provinces, 
Havana, Santa Clara, and Matanzas, is now dependent 
upon us. Within this territory is found Cuba's greatest 
population, wealth, and commerce. There are 33 mission 
centers, served by 26 workers. Our churches enroll 1980 
members and our Sunday schools 2784 pupils. These mis- 
sions contributed $8343 toward their own support last year. 
Of the 33 missions, only 11 have buildings. 

Educational Work. The Woman's Board maintains 
9 mission schools in Cuba with a total enrollment of 1557 
boys and girls. Fifty-five teachers are devoting themselves 
to the spiritual, physical, and mental care of these young 
Cubans. In one succinct sentence Mrs. F. S. Bennett has 
described the purpose of the educational work in Cuba, 
"The mission school is in Cuba not to make Americans, but 
to make Christian Cubans." No one can doubt this who 
visits one of these schools. Select any school at random. 
Very likely it will be taught by a young Cuban woman who 
has herself graduated from the mission school. In the class- 
room work as well as in the assembly you will hear a 
strong national note struck. You will see the Cuban chil- 
dren lined up in a hollow square saluting the Cuban flag. 
You will hear them sing the Cuban national anthem. These 
Cuban schools are schools of democracy. Some of the 
pupils are from poor homes, others are children of bank 

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AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 75 

presidents, mayors, physicians, and well-to-do business men. 
The children pay tuition. They buy their own books, so 
that the schools are partially self-supporting. In some cases 
all expenses, except the salaries of the teachers, are met from 
the tuition fund. It is the natural outgrowth of these mis- 
sion schools that an institution of higher learning should now 
be demanded. To meet this demand a school recently 
turned over to us by the Presbyterian Church South is 
being developed into a Normal school at Cardenas, where 
more than 500 young people are now in training. In addi- 
tion to this another well-equipped training school is being 
planned and will be located at Sancti Spiritus. 

Religious Work, in Cuba is under the inspiring leader- 
ship of Rev. E. A. Odell. Take two examples of this work. 
Here is the town of Cabaiguan, of 4000 people. The pastor 
is a Cuban. In addition to his church he has a school of 
168 children with 6 teachers. The school is almost self- 
supporting. The church is small but there is a Sunday 
school of 85. The influence of the pastor is strong in the 
community and from his school and church he is sending 
many groups of young people to the National Institutes 
and to the University of Havana. 

Twenty-five miles from Cabaiguan is Sancti Spiritus, a 
romantic old city dating back to the year 15 14. The popu- 
lation is about 17,000. The Presbyterian Church here is a 
beautiful building (the only church building which the 
Board of Home Missions has erected in Cuba in ten years) 
but it is not so much the beauty of the building that appeals 
as the beauty of the results the church is accomplishing 
It is rendering a service not only to its own community but 
to the Protestant cause throughout Cuba. For the last 
three years an institute patterned after the one at North- 
field, Massachusetts, has been held in the Sancti Spiritus 
church each summer. Workers from various parts of the 



76 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

island gather for ten days to talk over their problems and 
seek new visions to renew their courage. 

Perhaps the most concrete illustration of the sort of last- 
ing work the church of Sancti Spiritus is doing in its com- 
munity lies in the story of a photograph before the author. 
It is a photograph taken twelve years ago of a boys' Sunday- 
school class of this church. They are bright, upstanding 
boys. They finished their training at Sancti Spiritus and 
each went his own way according to his talent and inclina- 
tion. Boy No. i is continuing his studies in the United 
States. Boy No. 2 is now private secretary to the mayor 
of the city of Sancti Spiritus. Boy No. 3 has graduated 
from the University of Havana and is now a practicing 
physician in his home town. Boy No. 4 took three years 
advanced schooling at Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, and 
returned to become manager of a bank in Cuba. Boy No. 5 
is in charge of a large sugar plantation. Boy No. 6 after 
three years further schooling in the United States is now 
an accountant in the New York City National Bank at 
Sancti Spiritus. Boy No. 7 is continuing his studies in Mount 
Hermon. Boy No. 8 graduated from an American college 
and is now taking a medical course in Miami University, 
preparing to be a medical missionary. And remember that 
this was but one class of eight boys in the mission school and 
Sunday school at Sancti Spiritus. More than 200 such 
boys are enrolled the year round. 

Unfinished Tasks in Cuba. The demand for the edu- 
cational and religious help which the Presbyterian Church 
has extended to Cuba is beyond the capacity of our present 
equipment and personnel to supply. The schools are re- 
quired to turn away students seeking admission. Sometimes 
parents are so insistent that their children be admitted that 
they will not be satisfied until the principal has actually 
taken them through the school and shown them that every 



AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 77 

available desk and place for a desk is occupied. One of the 
teachers in one of the schools was asked about the location 
of a proposed new building. He replied, "Put it where you 
wish, the children will follow you, for there is no other school 
in the town that can compete with you." 

Rev. R. L. Wharton, the General Superintendent of the 
Woman's Board work in Cuba, reports: 

In at least three cases groups of citizens have come to us 
offering very substantial help financially provided we would 
give them a school. In one instance the citizens themselves 
undertook to establish a school but after a few months 
confessed their failure and made the significant statement 
that the only people who could establish and maintain the 
school they needed were the Presbyterians. Such facts as 
these show that there is a place for us and that our work 
is needed. The public-school system theoretically is good 
but in practice the teachers themselves confess that it is 
not by any means supplying the needs of the children. 
Actually there are eight hundred classrooms on the island 
closed for the lack of teachers and that in spite of the fact 
that the salaries paid are phenomenal in comparison with 
the requirements made upon the teachers. Within the past 
two years a new standard has been established by the 
public-school authorities which it is to be hoped will improve 
greatly conditions in the system within a brief period of 
years. According to the new plan normal schools have al- 
ready been established in four of the six provinces and only 
normal graduates will be employed in the schools. If this 
is adhered to and effective preparation is given in these 
normal schools certainly it should mean a long step forward 
for the youth of Cuba eventually. 

One of our own great outstanding needs is trained 
teachers and we are earnestly hoping that before another 
year we may have a department in operation in some of 
our schools with at least a degree of normal work. Teach- 
ers! Teachers! more teachers, consecrated teachers, is the 
cry that comes up from every side, men and women who 
love children, and who know how to impart knowledge and 



78 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

mold character. Many scores of opportunities have been 
lost in Cuba by a failure to go forward when God opened 
the door. Right now we must decide whether we are going 
to do the same thing educationally or not. The doors in 
this sense are wide open. 

In Cuba as in Porto Rico our greatest task is to give to the 
people a true understanding of the real nature of Chris- 
tianity, to bring them into close fellowship with God, to free 
their whole life from fear and to make it conform to Jesus' 
law of love and service. To fulfill this task adequately we 
must provide our present stations with suitable equipment, 
remembering that two thirds of them are still without build- 
ings. We must train a native ministry and to this end must 
develop the training school and the college. We must pro- 
vide helpful literature. When we have done these things 
we will have opened the way in Cuba for a free church and 
a free school and the blessings of Christian liberty. We will 
have helped the Cubans win their spiritual battle against 
ignorance, superstition, and fear. 



Questions for Discussion 

i. What is the public-school situation in Cuba? 

2. Describe a Cuban mission school. 

3. How evident is the need of new schools? 

4. Illustrate the religious work already established in 

Cuba. 

5. What is the task remaining? 



CHAPTER III 
IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 



INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The composition of the American city is the result 
of the three processes by which it has secured its peo- 
ple: rural emigration, alien immigration, and the in- 
crease due to births. Each of these processes has 
created a corresponding group in the American city: 
tht rural emigrant 's the result of the first; the for- 
eigner of the second, and the indigenous city folk of 
the third. 

The thing which differentiates these three groups 
most is the fact that in childhood the persons that be- 
long to them grew up in entirely different environ- 
ments. They think in fundamentally different terms, 
and tht'r usual reactions toward situations and facts 
are the result of these tradition *1 viewpoints. 

In the work of the city the rural emigrant, the alien, 
and the city-born all End a common interest. Drawn 
together in industry they constitute the industrial 
group. This group is the Church's most difficult prob- 
lem. The fact that the Protestant churches are the 
product of the earlier rural period of American life 
accounts largely for the inactivity and silence of the 
churches during great industrial struggles. Large 
sections of working groups have become alienated 
from the Church. They will continue to be alienated 
from it until it intelligently interprets the economic 
evolution taking place in this country and fearlessly 
stands for social justice and economic fair play. 

A study of one thousand workingmen of all kinds 
revealed the fact that the Church is much less attrac- 
tive to them than is any other "social" institution. 

These workingmen *re not particularly hostile to 
the Church; they are simply indifferent. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

The Board of Home Missions is endeavoring to 
meet this challenge in a variety of places, tongues, and 
ways. It is cooperating with sixteen greater city 
presbyteries from New York to San Francisco in 
many forms of pioneering church and community 
work. Last year 101 ministers, twenty lay workers, 
and forty-nine women visitors and community workers 
ministered in seventeen languages, to fifty national- 
ities, through mission stations, neighborhood houses, 
community centers, and foreign-language churches. 

The eighteen self-sustaining synods, and ten self- 
sustaining presbyteries, which together embrace the 
great industrial regions of the country, each carries on 
their work in addition to the above. This work is 
treated briefly in the following pages. 

Under the Board of Publication and Sabbath School 
Work, 40 colporteurs are engaged in as many different 
communities, getting the Bible into the hands and 
hearts of foreign-speaking people in this country. 
These colporteurs sold last year 6150 Bibles in other 
languages, and visited 44,820 families. 

Worthy as all this work is, it only touches the 
fringes of the task. The bulk of the business is not 
only unfinished — it is barely begun. 



Chapter III 

IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 

The Task as a Whole. Our task is to save men's 
spirits. Save them from what and for what? It is to save 
them from selfishness, from materialism, from low ideals, 
from burning up in the fires of passion and greed, of hatred 
and self-indulgence. It is to save them for usefulness, for 
service, and for the development of all the divine possi- 
bilities God has given them. The Christian way to do 
this — that is, the way of Christ — is to get men, through 
him, so connected with God that their spirits and his are 
one. 

It is difficult enough to accomplish this with men who 
live in the country, close to nature. It is a vastly different 
problem in industrial communities amid the roar of machin- 
ery, crowded tenements, and the incessant struggle of com- 
petitive commerce. Unnatural living conditions, vicious en- 
vironment, unjust working conditions, lack of educational 
facilities, and preachers of hatred often combine to wreak 
havoc with men's spirits even though their bodies may be 
able to stand the strain. 

Take for example an immigrant from Italy or Poland or 
Hungary. He comes to this country not knowing our 
language, our customs, our methods of government, or any 
of the thousand and one things that we Americans have 
known from our youth. He comes from a country where 
education was limited to the few, where the government was 
not democratic, and where the church was Catholic and 

82 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 83 

often corrupt. Arriving in a strange country he first runs 
the gauntlet of the petty thieves who have found the immi- 
grant "easy picking." Some of these petty thieves run 
lodging houses where the immigrant is charged exorbitant 
prices, some call themselves "immigrant bankers," some are 
so-called "guides," some are lawyers who claim to be able 
to render services that they cannot perform or charge out- 
rageously for the services they do render, some are quack 
doctors, and some are just plain crooks who under pretense 
that they can correct some alleged error in the immigrant's 
papers and thus prevent his being deported, get their foul 
hands upon the newcomer's small capital. Finally when this 
gauntlet has been run the immigrant finds himself in an in- 
dustrial center. He secures a job in a steel mill or a woolen 
mill or a slaughterhouse. All day he works amid the din of 
machinery. When his work is done he goes to his home 
in the "colony" which is usually crowded with other immi- 
grants like himself. He has little or no contact with Chris- 
tian Americans and his ideas are naturally molded largely 
by what he hears from other immigrants. 

There are 15,000,000 foreign-born in this country. Three 
fourths of them live in the cities, and the great majority 
work in large industrial plants. As this is being written 
about 3000 more immigrants are coming into America every 
day. What chance has the Church of getting these men con- 
nected with God if it simply hires a hall and employs a 
preacher to conduct the same sort of services used in a 
country church among American farmers? No chance 
at all. 

The Situation in One Typical Industrial Center. — 
Greater New York. For instance, take the Metropolitan 
Area of Greater New York. Rev. Kenneth Miller, di- 
rector of our coordinated Presbyterian efforts in New York, 
sums up the situation for us: He says: 



84 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

The home mission task in the Metropolitan Area involves 
the Chris tianization of a city of nine million souls. So vast 
are the problems involved, so stupendous the difficulties 
encountered, that it is difficult to imagine the metropolis 
of the New World as a Christian city, transformed into the 
city of the living God. And yet such is our goal, such our 
faith, and such our purpose, and of the responsibility for 
its accomplishment the Presbyterian Church has a large 
share, and yet only dimly realized and feebly borne. 

The great outstanding problem of the Metropolitan Area 
is the problem of Christianizing the foreigner, for he makes 
up four fifths of its population. The most baffling and per- 
plexing, and at the same time the most urgent task, that lies 
before us, is concerned with the Jews of Greater New York, 
— nearly two million souls. "But they are Jews," some one 
says, "they have their own religion. What have we to do 
with them?" But the fact of the matter is they have not 
their own religion. The percentage of apostasy among the 
Jews of New York is said to be far in excess of that pre- 
vailing in the Catholic and Protestant churches. Some esti- 
mate that fully ninety per cent of the Jews of New York 
have cut absolutely with the synagogue. The most casual 
observer must see that it is with the Jew that New York's 
materialism, pleasure madness, money-loving, is most ram- 
pant. The ghetto is manufacturing unbelievers and radi- 
cals so fast that the synagogue, church, and constructive 
American institutions are simply swamped. The Jewish 
youth is growing up and assuming a more and more influen- 
tial position in the commercial and even intellectual life 
of the city, and is growing up with few or no ideals of 
any sort, not to mention Christian ideals. On the simple 
ground of humanity, because the future of our city and 
country is at stake, we must accomplish the spiritualization, 
the Christianization of the Jew. It is not a question of 
proselyting; it is a question of bringing within reach of the 
transforming influences of religion a large mass of people 
that are now entirely alienated therefrom. The Presby- 
terian Church, like all Protestant churches in America, has 
approached this task timidly, half-heartedly, and thus far, 
unsuccessfully. The first task is to break down Jewish 
prejudice against Christianity and Christians, Simultane- 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 85 

ously with that there must be approached the task of 
building up positive ideals and standards, in accordance 
with the teachings of the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth. The 
Board of Home Missions is conducting two significant ex- 
periments of work for Jews, one in East New York (Browns- 
ville) and one in Newark, at the Bethany Community 
Center. Both projects are handicapped most seriously by 
lack of proper equipment, and for several years now the 
workers have been living for the time when they would be 
housed in an adequate fashion. We cannot hope to de- 
termine just how we should discharge our duty to the Jew 
unless we give a fair trial to the various methods of ap- 
proach, and convince our Jewish brethren of our sincerity, 
and ourselves that we can, as Christians, accomplish much 
for the spiritualization of the Jewish element of our popula- 
tion. 

The work among the other foreign nationalities in Greater 
New York is equally incommensurate with the magnitude 
of the task. The American Parish, on the upper East Side 
of Manhattan, under the leadership of Rev. Howard V. 
Yergin, is about as efficient and thoroughgoing a piece of 
home missionary work as we have in this country. And yet 
Mr. Yergin himself admits that the influence of these four 
churches and two neighborhood houses upon the great 
Italian community in which they are situated is scarcely 
noticeable. The fact is, New York could well have a church 
and parish house on every city block. The small share that 
the Presbyterian Church has in the Christianization of this 
community is well taken care of. But the point is, it is 
pitiably small as compared with the task. If we could re- 
produce the American parish one hundred times, we should 
be making a contribution somewhat worthy of the standing 
and resources of the Presbyterian Church. 

So with the Czecho- Slovaks. In New York fully seventy- 
five per cent of the forty thousand Czecho- Slovaks have 
broken absolutely with Catholicism, and have become "free- 
thinkers." Here is a parish of 30,000. And yet the Pres- 
byterian Church, through the combined efforts of mission 
churches, and the missionary endeavors of wealthy churches, 
has been able to muster together some three thousand only. 
Here the Protestant Church is ten per cent efficient at best. 



86 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

In the Metropolitan Area is included such cities as New- 
ark, Jersey City, Paterson, Passaic, Elizabeth, and Yonkers, 
any one of which presents a home mission task of great 
proportions, and in none of which, excepting Newark, has 
there been any realization of the responsibility of the Church 
for the Christianization of its own city. Newark presents 
the largest problem, and here a beginning has been made 
by the establishment of Friendly Centers and Neighborhood 
Houses. But in none of the other cities has the Church at 
large faced its responsibility and tried to meet it. 

Let Robert W. Anthony, chief of our missionary forces 
in Brooklyn and Queens, speak for those Boroughs. 

Brooklyn Borough has doubled its population in the last 
twenty years and now boasts almost 2,500,000 people. Half 
a century ago it was known as "The City of Churches"; 
to-day it is "The City of the Unchurched Masses." Brook- 
lyn with fewer people than Manhattan leads in registered 
voters and school children. In the face of this tidal wave of 
population the Presbyterian Church has remained stationary 
in membership and shows a heavy loss in Sunday-school 
enrollment. 

Why has this happened? Immigrants, speaking more 
than forty different languages, have poured into Brooklyn 
until 600,000 Jews and more than 200,000 Italians, to say 
nothing of other large racial groups, live in the Borough. 
The older Protestant constituency with its culture and 
wealth is rapidly moving out of Brooklyn. The majority of 
the church buildings are antiquated, well suited to the 
needs of fifty years ago, but not equipped for modern com- 
munity service. The usual staff is a solitary, underpaid 
minister, with no assistant of any kind. 

With a static membership, ill-adapted buildings, and 
rapidly changing conditions in every parish, the Presbyterian 
churches of Brooklyn are not meeting the needs of to-day. 
The prospects for ministering to the added hundreds of thou- 
sands who are coming to Brooklyn as a result of the open- 
ing of new rapid transit lines, are dark, unless heavy rein- 
forcements come soon. 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 87 

Queens Borough with 466,459 people exceeds Manhattan, 
Bronx, and Richmond in area, and is destined to have a 
larger population than Brooklyn. With its unrivaled land 
and water transportation it is the coming industrial center 
of the East. Its period of maximum expansion is just be- 
ginning. Our churches are badly located, weak in numbers 
and for the most part miserable in equipment. Far less than 
half of the children in Queens can be found enrolled in any 
Sunday school. Communities with thousands of inhabi- 
tants have no modern church buildings of any Protestant 
denomination. 

With its sister Borough of Brooklyn, Queens will control 
the political destinies of Greater New York for years to 
come. The two boroughs, because of the present situation 
and future prospects, constitute one of the most important 
mission fields in the Presbyterian Church. 

The old village type of church and ministry cannot 
Christianize the unchurched migrants from the city. Our 
present force and equipment are overwhelmed by the task. 

Why Should Christians Concern Themselves with 
Industrial Problems? The answer to that question is: 
We simply cannot help it. In the first place, industrial 
problems are crowding in on every side in our daily life. 
Whether we earn our living by producing or manufacturing 
or distributing, we are constantly face to face with ques- 
tions of human relationship, with competition with our fel- 
lows, hours, conditions and wages of labor, dangers to life 
and limb, and a thousand and one similar matters, every one 
of which is going to be answered one way or another in 
accordance with certain principles that underlie our thought 
and action. 

In the second place, Christianity is not simply a set of 
sweet thoughts about heaven or even an insurance policy 
against hell fire in the life to come. It is a kind of life — a 
kind of life that seeks to reproduce the purpose and the 
spirit and the principles of Jesus Christ. Among those 



88 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

principles there is none more revolutionary than his 
reverence for human personality which grew out of his faith 
in a divine Father dwelling in the human soul. The Chris- 
tian who accepts this principle for his own life answers 
accordingly the industrial questions that crowd upon him. 
To the Christian, industrial questions are not isolated things 
to be settled by arithemtic or even by economics, primarily. 
They are human questions, involving the souls of men, and 
must be settled always in that way which will be best for 
the spirits of the men concerned. 

Evangelism and Social Service. In general, the vari- 
ous attempts to make our industrial relationships conform 
to Christian principles may be grouped into one or the 
other of two classes: evangelism and social service. Evan- 
gelism seeks to change environment through the individual 
by getting that individual in connection with God. Social 
service seeks to change the individual by bettering his en- 
vironment. Both evangelism and social service aim ulti- 
mately at the same goal — a Christian individual in a 
Christian community. Both ways are essential to reach the 
goal. Jesus calling his disciples one by one — that was 
evangelism. Jesus healing the sick, feeding the multitudes, 
and cleansing the Temple of the money changers — that was 
social service. 

Not only are evangelism and social service aiming at the 
same goal; neither will reach that goal without the help of 
the other. Evangelism that is content to save individual 
souls simply for their own sakes and without relation to 
their conduct and their fellow workers, is simply pious self- 
ishness. Social service that assumes that economic condi- 
tions are the controlling factors of human life and that 
increase of prosperity will solve human problems, is plain 
foolishness. "Christianity is under no such illusion. It 
knows that no change in the external machinery of the pro- 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 89 

duction and distribution of wealth is sufficient to save 
society. It realizes that wealth itself is only a tool, capable 
of serving either worthy or ignoble ends, and that all turns 
upon the spirit in which it is used." * 

Pioneering. Because the Presbyterian Church has rec- 
ognized that the spirits of men in industrial centers need 
both an evangelistic and a social service ministry altogether 
different from the traditional, it has pioneered in finding 
new methods and in developing new programs. The Board 
of Publication and Sabbath School Work and the Home 
Board are each trying its own experiment, and in addi- 
tion they have jointly been instrumental in establishing more 
than 300 Daily Vacation Bible Schools, enrolling a total of 
more than 20,000 boys and girls in a program of Bible 
stories and memory verses, songs and games, handwork and 
play, all under Christian leadership. 

In twelve of the leading industrial centers of America the 
local Presbyterian churches and the various national agen- 
cies concerned, have organized Boards of church extension 
or similar bodies to work out the common task of the Pres- 
byterian Church in those centers — to save the spirits of 
men. The work of these organizations is so new and so 
little known by the Church at large, and yet so important 
to this nation and to the Kingdom of God, that it is worth 
setting down here a few of their enterprises. 

In New York there are n Presbyterian centers among 
Czecho-Slovaks, Italians, Magyars, and other immigrants. 
Five congregations and 2 Neighborhood Houses in the poly- 
glot upper East Side population, are federated in the Ameri- 
can Parish. This parish maintains a large summer camp in 
New Jersey. In the heart of the Bohemian section in New 
York stand the John Hus Church and Neighborhood House, 

1 The Church and Industrial Reconstruction. Committee on the 
War and the Religious Outlook. Association Press. 



90 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

constructed in Bohemian architecture and pioneering in 
methods of Christian Americanization among these people. 
On the lower East Side, in the heart of the Jewish section, 
is the Labor Temple with a great social program of educa- 
tion and service trying to interpret what is best in America 
to a race of people who have seen only what is worst in this 
country — our slums and our sweatshops. 

In Brooklyn foreign-language work is being conducted 
among Syrians, Poles, Lithuanians, French, Italians, Rus- 
sians, Jews, and Czecho- Slovaks. Classes and clubs are be- 
ing conducted in many centers throughout the year and 
fifteen Daily Vacation Bible Schools are held in Presby- 
terian churches during the summer. 

Philadelphia has developed the largest Italian Presby- 
terian Church in the country, a very interesting community 
work among the Jews (Mizpah), and an aggressive com- 
munity program at Barnes Memorial. Fifty-two hun- 
dred and eighty-three children were enrolled in the 
Presbyterian Daily Vacation Bible Schools in Philadelphia 
last summer. A Wayside Rescue Mission is also main- 
tained. 

Three important social centers are being maintained in 
Buffalo, and a new Neighborhood House is being erected 
to accommodate the enlarged work of the Immigrant Aid 
Bureau and Kindergarten at Lackawanna. 

In Pittsburgh ten Daily Vacation Bible Schools, a mission- 
ary training school, a rescue mission, a publication office, 
an aggressive work among foreign-speaking peoples, and 
three Negro missions, are all being maintained by the pres- 
bytery. 

In Baltimore twenty Daily Vacation Bible Schools, eight 
continuation schools, three foreign language centers among 
Italians, Bohemians, and Poles, one Negro center, one com- 
munity church, and a large Jewish work, are the tangible 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 91 

contributions of the Presbyterian churches through the 
Church Extension Board of the Presbytery. 

Cleveland has eleven Daily Vacation Bible Schools, four 
Italian and one Magyar Presbyterian social centers, and the 
Harkness Fresh Air camp which provides outings for more 
than 500 children during the summer. Three special centers 
are being developed at Woodland, North, and Firestone 
Park. Each of these centers has a staff of workers and a 
made-to-order program to fit the needs of the industrial 
population which it serves. 

In Detroit the presbytery conducts foreign language and 
social work among Italians, Armenians, Magyars, and Poles. 
It also conducts two neighborhood centers and one Negro 
center and church. The children of its 10 Daily Vacation 
Bible Schools represent fourteen different nationalities. 

The Presbytery of Chicago reaches in their own language, 
Italians, Poles, Czecho- Slovaks, Assyrians, Hollanders, 
Hungarians, Chinese, and twelve Spanish-speaking nation- 
alities. Through the English language it reaches thirty-four 
nationalities in such activities as English and civics clubs 
and classes and the multiplied functions of a community 
center. Neighborhood house and community center pro- 
grams are being maintained at 19 points. Three Negro 
centers are conducted and at three places there are special 
efforts made to solve the Jewish problem. 

On the Pacific Coast the most outstanding Presbyterian 
cooperative effort is that conducted by the San Francisco 
Presbytery, which maintains forty Daily Vacation Bible 
Schools, a summer camp, Young People's Conferences, a co- 
operative system of evangelism, a church-building fellowship 
of four hundred members contributing every time a home 
mission church is built, and a practical and successful plan 
of religious education and recruiting for the ministry. The 
record of this presbytery last year showed a net growth of 



92 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

nine per cent in Church membership, twenty-four per cent 
in Sunday-school enrollment, and sixty-eight per cent in 
benevolences. 

The Unfinished Task. The author asked the head of 
Presbyterian Church Extension activities in each of these 
industrial centers to write a statement on the unfinished 
task of the Presbyterian Church in his particular center — 
a statement that could be passed on to you in this book. 
Each man kindly wrote his statement. They all wrote with- 
out consulting each other, yet the statements are as alike 
as peas in a pod. The following statement by Dr. Charles 
L. Zorbaugh is as true for San Francisco, Chicago, New 
York, and all the rest as it is for Cleveland for which it was 
written: 

The task is not likely to be finished as far ahead as any- 
one can see. Eighty per cent of our population is either 
foreign born or only one generation removed. You might 
better say that our task is just started. The most obvious 
thing to be said about the bulk of our work is it is very 
new, just fairly begun. Our church extension organization, 
our foreign work, our summer schools, our fresh-air camp, 
our community demonstration, our neighborhood work are 
all new, all within a decade, with much of the experimental 
and nothing at all of finality about them. We actually feel 
that we are at the beginning of things. We are forever 
trying to keep up with the growth of the city. Our foreign 
work is painfully experimental. We have only four stations 
among the Italians and one among the Hungarians. I 
believe in this work. I don't see how any man can do other- 
wise. We are poor Christians if we try to dodge it. Yet it 
is full of uncertainty and disappointments and meager visi- 
ble results. It constitutes a great unfinished task for us. It 
is only nine or ten years ago that we first began to think of 
our duty to these new Americans. 

Let us turn from the organizations to the missionaries 
themselves and their work upon their fields. Let us take a 
few examples. 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 93 

Making a Beginning — Greeting the Immigrant at 
Ellis Island. Lately the Presbyterian Church has es- 
tablished a welfare worker on Ellis Island to see that as 
many immigrants as possible are greeted by Christian 
friendship and protected from the army of petty grafters 
who prey upon the ignorance and bewilderment of the new- 
comers. This welfare worker renders most of her service 
to those immigrants who have been sent to the temporary 
detention rooms because they have not sufficient funds to 
proceed to their destination, or because expected relatives 
have not called for them, or because they lack the proper 
affidavits. Some have incomplete addresses or none at all. 
Others have come with the intention of marrying at once and 
need to be chaperoned to City Hall. Still others want em- 
ployment, or must wait till some relative is removed from 
the hospital. The welfare worker endeavors to complete the 
insufficient address, to help secure employment, and to put 
the immigrant in touch with the relative confined in the 
hospital. Some of the more serious cases, such as those of 
children under sixteen who have come to this country un- 
accompanied, or of women who have lost their passports 
during the voyage, require weeks of difficult follow-up work, 
but the worker has her reward when the problem is at last 
solved and the immigrant sent on his way rejoicing. 

The Colporteurs. The colporteurs, or Bible men, are 
taking the gospel to the people of many tongues in the 
language of their native lands, not only at the port of entry 
but in the many places of their final settlement throughout 
our country. 

A writer in one of our missionary magazines says: 

Colporteurs belong to the constructive architectural corps 
of Kingdom builders who are digging the trenches in which 
others lay foundations on which, in due time, are to be 
built temples of God, 



94 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

The colporteur is not simply a book hawker, not merely a 
commercial agent. If he were, it would not be dishonorable. 
But he goes as a pioneer evangelist, a scout of the great 
militant Church of Christ. He cooperates with the mis- 
sionary. He goes to a town and visits every house. He 
finds those who are interested and gives a list of names to 
the nearest pastors. Sometimes he calls the people together 
and preaches to them, so that when the pastor comes he finds 
the church waiting for him to organize. He must work alone 
a great deal of the time; he must travel the dusty roads in 
the broiling sun; he must climb the mountains; he must 
bear the burden and the heat of the day. 

Experiences. There is no bar anywhere to the work 
of the colporteur. He goes to every hamlet and every 
house, even to the farthest corner of the little alley, his 
aim being to leave the printed page containing the wonderful 
story, in every home. His work cannot be measured by 
figures nor by the number of visits. 

One of our oldest colporteurs went to a lonely home in 
an Ohio mining town, where only the wife of the miner was 
at home, and being offered the Bible, she said that she could 
not read; and that it was no use to buy the book for her 
husband, as he spent his whole time with his comrades in 
the saloon gambling and drinking. However, the colporteur 
left the Bible in the home on trial. Within two months he 
again visited this family. He was seen and recognized 
by the woman while he was yet far from the house. She 
went to meet him and began to tell him the story of a great 
change in the life of her husband: "He noticed the book the 
first day he came from work," she said. "He began to read 
it and was so interested in it that he forgot to meet his 
comrades in the saloon. He did the same thing the next 
day, and has continued every day since. He does not go 
to the saloon, does not gamble, does not drink, and is an 
entirely changed man. Now I want to pay you for this 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 95 

book. It is a great treasure in my home." When she was 
told that one dollar was all that she owed, she protested and 
said: "Only one dollar for this great book. Oh, please 
accept at least two dollars. It is worth so much more to 
me." 

Personal Work. Another colporteur was visiting one of 
the largest hospitals in Pittsburgh. He was conducted to the 
bed of a Polish man whose arm was badly injured. The man 
refused to have it amputated, although he knew that with- 
out amputation he could not survive another day. He was 
discouraged and preferred to die. The colporteur spoke 
kindly to him and read the fourteenth chapter of John, and 
prayed with him. The man spoke little, but tears were 
noticed in his eyes. As they parted the colporteur left a 
Polish New Testament on his bed. When he came the next 
time, the patient was gone. His arm had been amputated 
and he had recovered and left the hospital. In about six 
months after this incident the colporteur was passing through 
an alley when a one-armed man called from a window ask- 
ing him to come in. He said: "You do not remember me 
but I remember you. You visited me when I was in the 
hospital. You prayed with me and you left this little book 
on my bed. I read it and I want to tell you that through 
this book I came to the knowledge of my Saviour and I 
am a far happier man with one arm than I ever was with 
two arms. Through references in this book I learned also 
that there must be a bigger book, and I want to have it." 
He then purchased a copy of the Polish Bible from the 
colporteur. The colporteur has never met him since and 
does not know of what church he is a member, but he 
knows that he found the Book of life. 

A Slovak Bible was left by one of our colporteurs in a 
house where four men were gambling, and a woman was 
serving beer. The colporteur managed to leave a Bible 



96 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

in the house, asking the people to read it, promising that he 
would call again sometime and see how they liked it. 

However, he did not call until about a year after this 
incident. When he opened the door he found the room in 
perfect order, a clean cloth on the table, and if it had not 
been for the Bible which was lying on the table, and which 
he recognized, he would have thought that he entered the 
wrong house. Husband and wife recognized the colporteur. 
They related to him the story of the wonderful change in 
their family life since they began to read the Bible. "This 
book is now most precious to our home," the man said, 
"no drinking or gambling is going on here any more. We 
are trying to live according to the Word of God and we 
cannot thank you enough for this book." 

Results. The report of a single year's work of the 
colporteurs will convey an idea of the far-reaching influence 
of their labors. During the year ending March 31, 1920, 
there were thirty-seven colporteurs engaged, some of them 
serving only a portion of the year. Their reports show that 
46,959 families were visited, and that most of them were 
destitute of the Bible. They distributed by sale and 
gift 6734 copies of the Scriptures, besides 12,818 other 
religious books, and 123,010 tracts containing the gospel 
message, in at least twenty different languages. 

Building on a Colporteur's Foundation. Eight years 
ago Rev. William J. Bell left Princeton Seminary to work 
for a few weeks as an investigator on the Mesaba Range of 
Northern Minnesota. He was a Minnesota boy and knew 
the pioneer work of the late Frank Higgins, lumberjack 
missionary of that state. His intention was to spend a few 
weeks on Higgins' old trail and then to go abroad for a 
year's study in Europe before returning to this country 
for missionary work. But what he found on Higgins' old 
trail drove out of his head all notion of going to Europe or 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 97 

anywhere else. He found that the 25,000 lumberjacks of 
Higgins' day had been supplanted by 200,000 miners — 
eighty-seven per cent of them foreign-born — representing 
some twenty different nationalities. It was a country as un- 
like America as Russia or Finland. 

Bell began as an investigator, then worked as a colporteur 
going from house to house, getting acquainted with the 
people and winning his way into their hearts by his sincerity 
and his friendliness. After a while he opened a Daily Vaca- 
tion Bible School where six days a week through the summer 
he taught the children of these foreigners songs, stories, 
games, and handwork. The school soon became popular 
with both children and parents. The next year he opened 
another and then still others in various villages and "loca- 
tions" on the Mesaba and Vermilion Iron Range*. Classes 
and clubs for both men and women followed quickly. 

Some months ago the writer visited Bell and for two or 
three days hung on to his coat tails. He is a human dynamo. 
Somehow he has been conducting educational and religious 
work in twenty centers strung out along a hundred miles 
of the Mesaba and Vermilion Ranges. And when in sum- 
mer his vacation schools have finished their courses and 
dismissed their 750 children, he rests himself conducting 
camps for more than 500 children of immigrants. To be 
sure he doesn't do it all himself. 

"But where do you get your helpers?" 

"Most of them are young immigrants who were members 
of these classes themselves a few years ago. They go away 
to college and university and then come back to serve their 
own people here." 

If a final proof of the efficacy of the methods of these 
pathfinders was needed, it came one day in a classroom 
conducted by a Finnish worker of Bell's staff. In the midst 
of the devotional hour when all the children were assembled 



98 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

for songs and stories, an irate Finnish father burst into 
the room ana demanded between oaths that his son leave 
the school at once and return to his own home. Quickly 
the little teacher walked up to him and spoke to him quietly 
in his own tongue. 

"What! You are a Finn?" he exclaimed in their common 
language. His anger gave way to wonder and then to en- 
thusiasm as the little teacher told him about the school. 
"Wait!" he said, and hurried out of the room. Five minutes 
later he returned bringing his young daughter and handed 
her over to the teacher to be enrolled. 

"Bell," the writer said, as he prepared to return, "is there 
anything I can do for you back East?" 

"Recruit more workers for me," he said. "We are touching 
only the fringes of this job, and the I. W. W. and other 
radical organizations are spending many times as much 
among these immigrants as we are." 

The Unfinished Task on the Iron Ranges. "What 
do you want these trained workers for?" 

"I want them to provide Christian leadership for these 
people, to visit them in their homes, to make friends with 
them, and personify for them all that is best in America 
in the way of democracy, fellowship, and neighborliness. I 
want leaders strong enough to command the respect and co- 
operation of the school authorities, the mining companies, 
the company doctors, municipal nurses, and company offi- 
cials. I want leaders who understand the materials and 
methods of Christian education and who can teach the young 
people on week days as well as on Sundays. I could easily 
use ten such leaders now in a territory here on the ranges 
which is as yet absolutely untouched. I want leaders who 
have executive power too, and who can help these people se- 
cure neighborhood houses properly equipped, to carry on our 
cooperative efforts in building a Christian American 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 90 

democracy. Send me such leaders and I will promise 
them — " 

"Well, what will you promise them?" 

"I will promise them a chance to invest their lives in 
building up a great Christian country. I will promise them 
a man's job, a long fight, and the confidence of ultimate 
victory. I will promise them the friendship of these 
children." 

Summing Up the Unfinished Task. These glimpses 
of the work on the Iron Ranges and of the colporteurs and of 
the twelve major city presbyteries are altogether inadequate 
to portray either the size of the task or the efforts of the 
Presbyterian Church to solve it. We have not even men- 
tioned the 1,500,000 migrant laborers who work in harvest 
fields, truck patches, vineyards, orchards, and lumber camps 
a few weeks or months at a time and then move on like 
Ishmaelites to other communities, never staying anywhere 
long enough to be reached by the traditional methods of 
local churches. And what of the 300,000 Negroes who 
have migrated from the South during the last few years to 
the industrial centers of the North and who now live among 
the very worst conditions of the so-called civilized life? 
And just now the papers are telling us that from 15,000,000 
to 25,000,000 foreigners are determined to come to America. 
These figures stagger the imagination; they present a 
problem far beyond the capacity of the Presbyterian organi- 
zation to reach, but that does not excuse us from making 
the effort. Let us pause and try to get a perspective on 
this business. 

Perspective. The purport of this book is this: As 
Christians we are working to establish the Kingdom of God 
— the time when men shall live together in justice, right- 
eousness, and brotherhood, in fellowship with God. As 
Presbyterians we have historically been especially vigorous 



ioo UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

in removing certain obstacles that prevented men from 
establishing such a Kingdom, and to that end have fought 
for political and religious freedom and for education. The 
task that confronts us in industrial centers is in line with 
our purpose as Christians and our history as Presbyterians. 
It is to help the millions of men and women who live in 
America's industrial centers, the great majority of them 
immigrants, first to a closer fellowship with God, and second 
actually to secure the political and religious freedom and 
the education they need for the fullest development of their 
characters. 

The Only Solution. The task is beyond our organi- 
zation, but not beyond us as individual Christians. If each 
of the 1,600,000 Presbyterians in America would extend a 
sympathetic and friendly hand to the immigrants in his own 
community, the immigrant "problem" would dissolve in 
mutual understanding. If each of us lived out in daily 
practice the Golden Rule, industrial warfare would give way 
to brotherhood. 

Old-Fashioned Neighborliness. It is for such man- 
to-man friendship that Dr. William P. Shriver appeals in 
his account of the work of the Neighborhood House, at Gary 
Indiana. 

The core of Christian Americanization is nothing more, 
nor less, than old-fashioned neighborliness. Kindness born 
of a sense of kinship is the strong tie to bind us in our new 
community relations. For that the steel towns, the mill 
towns, the mining camps wait. For that the heart of the 
immigrant, far from the old home, amidst the strangeness 
and perplexities of a new world, is fertile soil. "A neighbor 
for every foreign family," might well be the slogan of many a 
community that is asking to-day, "What can we do for 
the immigrant?" 

For the foreign quarter, the polyglot community, the 
"Little Italy" on the other side of the tracks, this purpose 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 101 

of a Christian neighborliness may often best be translated 
through a Neighborhood House. Let it be as simple as 
possible, an old house converted to a new service, freshened 
by paint, made homelike and inviting, a cheerful place for 
meeting and getting acquainted, for friendly helpfulness 
according to the need of that particular community, and a 
new door will have to be opened out into all that finer, 
fairer community life with which we associate the best of 
America. 

Ten years ago the Neighborhood House at Gary, at that 
wonder center of the steel industry, was inaugurated in this 
simple way. To-day it is housed in a building erected in 
successive stages at a cost of $50,000. Its equipment and 
activities reflect the social and religious needs of the foreign 
and polyglot community of South Gary. There are widows 
of the steel workers who must go out daily to work; for their 
babies there is a day nursery. During the summer an im- 
mense amount of infant welfare work is done in the station 
established at the house. A visiting nurse employed by 
the city makes her headquarters there. Out of a total of 
57,000 attendants at the week-day activities of the house 
in a year, one fourth were reached in the interest of health 
and better conditions of physical life, through the friendly 
service of the day and night nursery, the clinic, the baths, 
and sickness treated. So the urgent need of the neighbor- 
hood registers itself in the program of the Gary Neighbor- 
hood House. 

There is a laundry where every facility is furnished for 
doing the family wash. An employment bureau last year 
provided 3500 pieces of day's work, especially for women. 
Many permanent positions, mostly in homes, were found. 
The house is used as a meeting place for various immigrant 
and fraternal societies. There are lectures, a library, classes 
in English for coming Americans, piano lessons and practice, 
cooking and needlework classes, boys' and girls' clubs, and 
gardens. At every possible point cooperation is established 
with the churches, schools, associated charities, Red Cross, 
physicians, city matrons, hospitals, probation officers, and 
all public welfare and social agencies. 

All this service is an expression of the spirit of Christ. 
The Neighborhood House is a modern incarnation of a liv- 



102 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

ing, loving, serving Teacher and Friend. It is a gospel of 
acts for the foreigners, for whom, too often, our Christ has 
been only a dead Christ presented in form and sacrament 
and ceremony. There is a Sunday school with an average 
attendance of 145. The week-day religious school, con- 
ducted cooperatively under the Gary plan, enlists an attend- 
ance of 100 twice a week. Within the fellowship of the 
house has developed a society of Christians, the Church of 
the Saviour, with worship in English, Slovak, and Italian. 

At the heart of this house, are those who think and plan 
and hold out their hands in neighborly fashion. Rev. Ralph 
Cummins, director, an honor graduate of McCormick Theo- 
logical Seminary, spent fifteen months in southern Europe 
as an immigration fellow of the Board of Home Missions. 
He knows the peasant immigrant both here and over there. 
To the field of the immigrant and industrial community he 
has given his life in the same fine devotion with which other 
younger ministers have chosen the foreign field. Mrs. Cum- 
mins, a graduate nurse, has planned and directed the nursery, 
the clinic, and the round of home visitation. Both of these 
leaders embody the inspiring spirit of the New Home 
Missions. 

The Neighborhood House is a valued asset in any pro- 
gram of Christian Americanization. It affords opportunity 
for the mutual interchange of the best of immigrant life 
and tradition and the best and most hopeful Americanism. 
It reproduces the informal and grateful ministry of Jesus. 
There could be no finer contribution on the part of the 
Presbyterian Church to our new American life than a hun- 
dred of these Neighborhood Houses spread across this 
country from coast to coast. 



IN INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES 103 



Questions for Discussion 

1. Why in industrial centers is it especially hard to get 

hold of the spirits of men? 

2. Describe the arrival and settlement of a typical Polish 

immigrant in this country. 

3. How many foreign born are there in the United 

States? Where do they live? 

4. Sketch the present church and immigrant situation in 

Greater New York. In your own community. 

5. What are "Daily Vacation Bible Schools"? 

6. What are "Boards of Church Extension"? How many 

of these are there at present? Where, for example? 
Mention at least four different lines of work they are 
trying, 
j. At what stage is our work among the immigrants? 
Why has the Church established a welfare worker 
at Ellis Island? 

8. Describe the task of a colporteur showing its diffi- 

culties and its opportunities. 

9. The Iron Ranges. Where are they? Why is Chris- 

tian Americanization work needed there? What 
has been done? What further ought to be done? 

10. In immigrant work what is the value of "old-fashioned 

neighborliness"? 

11. Demonstrate the significance of a Neighborhood 

House in a foreign section. 

12. Is there an immigrant "colony" in or near your com- 

munity? What is your church doing to extend 
neighborliness to it? What are you not doing? 
What more should you do as a church and as in- 
dividuals? 



CHAPTER IV 
IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

Fifty -four million people are living in rural and 
small town communities of less than 5000 population. 
The problems facing the Church are shifting popula- 
tion, declining Church membership, lack of community 
centers and community leadership, the circuit sys- 
tem, nonresident ministry, inadequate equipment, and 
denominational overlapping. 

The Ohio Rural Life Survey found that of rsrs 
churches in thirty-one counties more than two thirds 
were arrested or dying. 

Very few country churches receive the full time of a 
pastor. Ministers cross and recross one another's 
paths, serving two, four, or even eight and ten 
churches. Of the rj,ooo country churches of one de- 
nomination, j 2,000 are without services every Sunday. 
Another denomination has nine tenths of its rural 
churches served by absentee pastors: and three 
fourths of its churches have but one service per 
month; while one fourth has no Sunday school at all. 

There is a close relation between the decadence of 
country populations and the degeneration of rural 
stock. Rev. C. O. Gill in his book "Six Thousand 
Country Churches" shows that illiteracy, illegitimacy, 
crime, and physical degeneracy correspond in their 
frequency to the decay of the country church and the 
substitution for it of an emotional, irresponsible re- 
ligious type — a great danger to Protestantism and 
Americanism. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

With the aid of the Board of Home Missions, 418 
ministers are serving more than 1000 churches. This 
is the historic "American Work" of the Board. About 
nine out of ten Presbyterian churches in this country 
to-day were at one time home mission churches of 
this type. The Board's aim is to develop weak 
churches into strong, self-supporting ones with resi- 
dent pastors, with proper equipment and without 
waste of money and effort in competition with other 
denominations. 

This Board, through its Country Life Department, 
is also administering fifty-three demonstration coun- 
try parishes in the Middle West, Southland Far West, 
each with a resident pastor and with each securing as 
rapidly as possible the equipment needed for its par- 
ticular field. 

In cooperation with other denominations, ten sum- 
mer schools are being conducted for country minis- 
ters. These schools deal not only with the fundamen- 
tal philosophy underlying the building up of a Chris- 
tian rural community life, but with practical and suc- 
cessful methods as well. 

To build up a more permanent personnel in rural 
fields, a strong recruiting policy has been adopted by 
which specially trained young men are being recruited 
on five and seven year contracts, with a living wage 
and sufficient equipment for effective work. 

Through the eighteen self-supporting synods and 
presbyteries which administer their own work, simi- 
lar attempts are being made to develop rural fields 
under resident ministers on long term service plans. 

We have every right to feel proud of our home mis- 
sion work in rural and frontier communities, but the 
plain fact is that the Presbyterian Church still toler- 
ates the pernicious circuit system, still underpays its 
ministers, and still is content to go along in the old 
ruts with an outworn program that does not meet the 
needs of present-day communities or materially help 
country people in their spiritual battles. 



Chapter IV 

IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 

The Task of the Church in the Country. The task 
of the Church in the city is to save men's spirits from burn- 
ing up in the competitive race for business. It is a race 
where a man is subjected to all the temptations of greed, 
passion, and cruelty. Unnatural living conditions, the 
pressure of crowds, and the roar of machinery must be 
overcome before a man may listen to the still small voice 
of God in his soul. 

The task of the Church in the country is also to save 
men's spirits, and to make them one with God, but the 
obstacles to be overcome are different. The farmer's spirit- 
ual war is against individualism, isolation, narrowness of 
mind and heart, a false independence, and the malignity 
that breeds in moral and social stagnation. Somehow the 
Church must help the farmer to win this war. It must help 
him to put cooperation in the place of individualism, and 
breadth of sympathy and understanding in the place of 
narrowness. It must see that there is no moral or social 
stagnation in the farmer's community, but instead a whole- 
some happy life for himself, his wife, and his children in 
fellowship with God. 

In Fellowship with God — that is the Church's end as 
well as its method. Other organizations, the Grange, the 
school, the lodge, and a score of social and commercial 
agencies, are endeavoring to improve social conditions in 

108 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 109 

the country and the Church must work with them all. But 
the task of the Church is fundamental to them all, for unless 
a man's life is so controlled by a living, indwelling God that 
he desires to conform his conduct to Christ's law of love 
and service, there is small chance of educating him in any- 
thing except selfishness. You may teach him how to raise 
more corn, but he will use his knowledge only to "feed more 
hogs, to buy more land, to raise more corn, to feed more 
hogs, to buy more land," and so on until he is gathered to 
his fathers in the village cemetery. It is the frank purpose 
of getting men in fellowship with God that distinguishes 
the task of the Church from every other social agency. 

The Struggle to Survive. So much for the task of 
the Church in the country. For the last three decades this 
task has been increasingly difficult. The country church has 
been engaged in a terrific struggle to survive. So long as 
its task was among a settled population where generation 
after generation lived on the same land, worshiped in the 
same church, and worked and played together in the same 
homes and public buildings the Church's task was simple 
enough, although never easy. But economic and social 
conditions have been changing mightily. First farm land 
began to soar in price and more and more it became the 
object of speculation. Old families began to sell their farms 
and move on to cheaper land. The typical rural community 
to-day has been undergoing a shift in the agricultural popu- 
lation. The old families moving out has meant a breaking 
of community ties. Often the old families have been suc- 
ceeded by absentee landlords. Old forms of recreation have 
been passing away, community spirit and community pride 
have been at low ebb. Tenant farming has increased. So- 
cial and moral stagnation have set in. 

The average country church is face to face with the 
problem of "oldtimer" and "newcomer." The oldtimers 



no UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

are for shifting the burdens of community problems and 
responsibilities upon the shoulders of the newcomers, and the 
newcomers are for pushing them back upon the oldtimers. 
Add to these problems of shifting population, changing com- 
munities and oldtimer and newcomer difficulties, the changes 
that have been brought about by telephones, rural mail 
delivery, automobiles, mail-order businesses, and consoli- 
dated schools — and you have some conception of the new 
conditions in which the country church works. 

But changed though the conditions in the country may be 
the average country church has not changed its program or 
its methods. It has been stumbling along in the old ruts 
and wondering why it made no progress. It has been preach- 
ing and taking collections. Its order of service is the same 
that it had in pioneer days — a few hymns and a sermon. 
Then country people seldom got together in any sort of 
meeting. The preacher was the only educated man in the 
community. He was newspaper and magazine as well as 
prophet. A social meeting and a sermon met a very defi- 
nite need. But to-day many in the congregation are as 
well educated as the preacher. The spiritual problems that 
face the congregation are largely social. Yet the preacher 
and his message and the old order of service are still in- 
dividual and otherworldly. 

Moreover the Church has gone on wastefully multiplying 
little one-celled church buildings until in many parts of the 
Middle West and South we have four church buildings where 
there is support for only one. And instead of developing 
a highly trained resident ministry for the country church 
we have multiplied circuit riders who live in towns where 
they do not preach and preach in the country where they do 
not live. 

Because the country church has failed to adapt itself to 
changed conditions in the country and failed to apply 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES in 

business sense in administering its work as an institution 
the struggle for survival has been going hard with it. The 
rural survey of the Interchurch World Movement tells a 
story of decline and decay that challenges the earnest 
thought of every American. 

Decreasing Numbers in Country Communities and 
Country Churches. From a thriving country church of 
fifty-five families in 191 7 one congregation has lost twenty- 
seven in the last three years. Nearly half of the families 
in this Michigan rural community closed their homes and 
moved either to Detroit or Flint. The graduating class of 
the high school numbered twenty in 19 18, six in 19 19, and 
last year three. This tells the story of what has been hap- 
pening in greater or less degree in thousands of country 
churches. Excluding the incorporated towns of under 2500 
population, rural America lost slightly in population during 
the last census period. Everywhere except in the newest 
sections, country churches are reporting diminishing mem- 
berships. An analysis of seventeen counties in one repre- 
sentative state, covering 738 churches, shows that less than 
two fifths are growing, while nearly one fifth has given up 
the struggle to survive. 

The Ineffectiveness of the Too Small Church. 
This naturally makes for a small country church. Dr. Gill's 
study of nearly 7000 country churches in Ohio in 19 16 
showed that more than half had less than 75 members. 
From county after county reports of the Interchurch Survey 
showed that from thirty-five to fifty-five per cent of the 
churches in the open country had less than twenty-five 
members. It is a dull and uninspiring church life at the best, 
which such meager groups sustain. Too few for aggressive, 
telling work, too poor collectively to have either adequate 
equipment or ministry, too small to provide enthusiasm and 
leadership for service, such churches, results thus jar in 



ii2 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

hand would indicate, have but one chance in jour of sur- 
viving. 

Inadequate Leadership. Some of these struggling 
churches that happen to be in stragetic places might be im- 
bued with new life and vision, were the leadership adequate. 
Too frequently, however, the country pastor is not fitted to 
cope with the changing conditions of these times. College 
and seminary men are rare in the open country ministry, 
unless it be that they motor out from some town or city to 
preach a sermon, receive an honorarium, and ride away. 
One of the most progressive denominations in a prosperous 
eastern state reports that sixty per cent of its rural pastors 
have not had college or seminary preparation for their 
work. Four of the largest denominations serving rural 
America admit that not more than ten per cent of their 
country ministers have had such training. Some counties 
have been found in which not a minister was so trained. 
Quite apart from the salary question, the young man of to- 
day, adequately trained, is not interested in the task of 
holding together small and ever smaller groups of people in 
organized congregations just because the idea persists that 
denominational well-being is thus benefited. Hence, though 
there are notable exceptions, trained religious leadership is 
still to be supplied to the average country community. 

The Pernicious Circuit System. This general situa- 
tion, as well as the legacy of the past, has fastened upon the 
Church that evil known as the circuit system. Ministers 
are asked to divide their time among several country congre- 
gations. They are assigned three, four, six, even eight to 
a dozen churches which become points on the circuit of the 
minister. This system reduces the servant of the Lord to 
the position of a traveling peddler of sermons. Pastoral 
work that means so much in its intimate contact becomes 
impossible. Residence with the majority of his congrega- 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 113 

tion, with that type of careful executive oversight that this 
implies, is out of the question. The system is general 
throughout America. It is an exceptional county that 
shows more than one out of every four of its ministers 
giving full time to but one congregation. The acid test 
of any system is the result it produces. With at least two 
out of every three country churches in America closed on any 
given Sunday in the year, the Church itself supplies the 
opening wedge for Sabbath-breaking. Denominationalism 
demands that communities keep the Lord's Day only as 
often as the circuit rider can meet his appointments. The 
inefficiency of the plan is further revealed when it is realized 
that ministers travel thousands of miles, crossing and re- 
crossing one another's paths to keep their appointments. 
Often they pass through areas entirely untouched by the 
Church, because the church without a resident pastor on 
full time to direct its energies does not stretch out far from 
the home base. Seeing that the Church does not take itself 
seriously, people treat it in the same way. Many whole 
communities are served entirely by nonresident pastors who 
come from without and travel around a circuit. One east- 
ern town has three churches and three resident ministers. 
None of the resident ministers, however, preaches in any 
of these churches. Instead they travel to stations scattered 
through three counties, the churches in the town being served 
by three men from without, one of whom travels nearly 
100 miles a round trip every time he preaches in this town. 
Such conditions are not unique by any means. They can 
be duplicated in every part of America. One of the richest 
agricultural townships in Pennsylvania has four churches. 
They are in sight of one another. One has two services a 
month and is served by a pastor from another state. The 
second receives one service a month from a pastor ten 
miles away. The pastor for the third comes once a month 



ii4 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

on a week night from Washington, D. C. The fourth church 
has closed its doors. The people could easily support one 
full-time, resident pastor who, as a layman in another rural 
community said in pleading for just this thing, "would be 
a man of God to live among us, who would occupy one of the 
three empty parsonages, who would care about our school 
because his children went there, who would be concerned 
about how we played for he and his would play with us, 
who would understand our sorrows, because he would be one 
of us, who would point the way of God, by life and direc- 
tion as well as by an occasional word." 

Denominational Overlapping. As has been indicated 
the circuit system is an excuse to keep together denomina- 
tional groups for the glory of annual reports. That spells 
denominational overlapping and all the waste that this form 
of competition means. The community from which came the 
layman quoted just above has three churches for 550 people, 
all on part time. Across the state line from that town is a 
village of 150, in which six churches still cling tenaciously 
to some sort of life. In Spring Mills, a hamlet of 456 people, 
there are six churches, but no resident ministers. Within 
a radius of three quarters of a mile are three churches of the 
same denomination. In the face of bettering roads this is 
the most inexcusable type of competition. Instances could 
be multiplied but results are more to our purpose. 

Apply this situation to a given county. We find seven 
communities with seventy churches, not one of which has a 
noncompetitive field. Of the seventeen clergymen residing 
in the county only four live near any one of the churches 
which they serve. Not one gives his undivided attention to 
any single church. Nineteen ministers living outside of the 
county enter it to preach at various points. On an average 
they travel almost twenty miles to reach their stations. The 
parishes of some of these churches compete with as many as 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 115 

twelve of their neighbors. Yet there are nine considerable 
areas within this county that do not receive the attention of 
any church although ministers ride through them to reach 
their appointments. Of the churches in this county only 
four have as many as four services a month. Ten have had 
no meeting for half a year or more. A score have but one 
service a month, twenty-eight have two services, and two, 
three. The balance is entirely abandoned. The circuit 
plan, the overlapping, in short the system on which we try to 
administer the rural church in America, is therefore respon- 
sible through this type of service, not only for unevangelized 
areas but for whole townships and communities that are 
actually neglected because of the effort to hold allegiance 
merely by occasional preaching. 

The situation of this county is no worse than the average. 
In one of the richest counties of the corn belt forty-one 
churches leave one quarter of the area and more than one 
quarter of the population outside their ministry, while no 
church, on the other hand, is free from competition from 
some of its neighbors. In a New England community of 
twenty-six square miles this process has run its course. 
Last year eight abandoned churches in that area told the 
story of destruction through competition and its attendant 
evils. To-day, cooperatively, one resident leader is reaching 
the entire region and securing real response. 

Inadequate Program. The program of the Church on 
a circuit is nothing more than its once or twice a month 
preaching service and an annual revival. No city church 
could be sustained on this basis and country churches cannot 
either. Between one sixth and one quarter of churches 
on circuits have not even the most elementary sort of Sunday 
school. The pastor of one church remarked that the future 
of the Church lay with its young people. Out of ninety- 
five members of this church fifty-five were under twenty-one 



n6 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

years of age. Yet this church had no young people's society, 
no leadership training, no social life, not even a Sunday- 
school picnic. The pastor preached twice a month but did 
not even attend Sunday school. The future of the Church, 
however, "lies with the young people." Are they to blame 
if they let it die? 

Starvation Salaries. It is sometimes said in defense of 
the circuit system that it enables the country people to have 
some sort of religious ministration within reach of what they 
can afford and that it gives to the minister a wage higher 
than he could hope for did he serve but one congre- 
gation. 

What are the facts? In one of the richest agricultural 
counties in the east, a trucking county, only fifteen per cent 
of the ministers receive $1500 or more, including the value of 
the parsonage. More than one third must resort to other 
occupations to make both ends meet. In another state the 
ministers of seventeen counties were studied and more than 
half had to divide their time between their churches and 
some secular occupation. In a score or more of counties the 
average annual wage was less than $100 and in several less 
than $35. County after county in every section of the coun- 
try fails to show a minister who needs to pay an income tax. 
The average wage of most is below the income of the rubber 
and shoe workers. 

The record of the Presbyterian Church in this matter of 
salaries is not a happy record to contemplate. The statistics 
in the American Volume of the Interchurch World Survey 
show that the average salary of a Presbyterian (North) 
minister is only $1393 including his house, although the 
government has estimated that the bare cost of living for 
an average American family is $1500. Our support of re- 
tired ministers and widows and orphans of ministers is even 
less worthy. The maximum relief that the Board of Min- 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 117 

isterial Relief and Sustentation was able to give to any re- 
tired minister during the year ending March 31, 19 19 (the 
last figures available) was $400. Two hundred and fifty- 
nine honor roll retired ministers received an average of only 
$334; 421 other ministers received an average of $271; 
900 widows received an average of $179, and no widow was 
allowed more than $300. "The Church which fails to take 
care of its ministers when they have worn themselves out in 
its service, will shortly have no ministers wearing them- 
selves out for it." 

Put Yourself in the Minister's Place. In the large, 
facts like this make little impression. Think yourself into 
the personal situation of the spiritual leaders who face these 
facts. Writes one: "I cannot keep my wife and baby at 
the present cost of living and pay off the debt on my educa- 
tion on a salary of $1100 a year and house. We are without 
clothes respectable for our calling. I am starved both 
physically and spiritually trying to live and work in a town 
where there are four Protestant churches when there should 
be one. The pastor of Church A receives several hundred 
dollars home mission aid. Church B is one point on a large 
circuit. One hundred dollars of my salary (Church C) 
comes from the Home Board. Church D (Presbyterian) 
was closed, but with money from their campaign they are 
opening up again with $400 missionary money." Mission- 
ary money! How long, O Lord, how long? 

Jesus Christ called men to sacrifice. He also called them 
to service — service for the Kingdom of God. No real 
disciple desires more than the hire of which he is worthy 
as a laborer, which will provide for the daily bread. But 
never can the best men of America lay down their lives as 
a sacrifice on the altar of starvation for the sake of any less 
cause than the Kingdom of God. Loyalty to Jesus does not 
demand submission to that type of situation. 



n8 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

The Immigrant in Town and Country. The whole 
task is being complicated in many sections, especially in New 
England, the Mississippi Valley, and the small fruit regions 
of the Pacific Coast, by the inrushing tide of foreign born. 
Nearly 6,000,000 foreign born and another 6,000,000 of im- 
mediate foreign extraction now live in town and country 
districts of America. They bring different languages, dif- 
ferent customs, and different standards of living into the 
rural community. The Church must find a way to meet 
the spiritual needs of these immigrants. We must lead the 
way for a clearer mutual understanding in order that they 
may know what is the best in America and we may know 
what is best in them — and that together we may build up 
a New America. The survey returns of one county of 30,000 
omitted to mention a community of 2000. When this 
omission was checked back it was explained that this com- 
munity of 2000 was made up of foreigners and was therefore 
of no significa?ice in the study of the churches of the county! 

The Unfinished Task. These, then, are some of the 
outstanding problems. Every county studied shows its 
unevangelized or neglected areas, reveals need for adjust- 
ment of parishes and ministerial residences, for adequate 
equipment, enlarged program, resident ministers, a unified 
program of effort, and a gospel wide enough in its applica- 
tion to include all community relationships and needs. 
It must meet the spiritual needs of its contemporaries — 
not its forefathers. If it is to do this it must first eliminate 
its present handicaps, its outworn program, its wasteful 
competition, its nonresident ministry, its insufficiently pre- 
pared preachers, its inadequate salaries. 

The Importance of This to the Presbyterian 
Church as a Whole. Seventy per cent of the Presbyterian 
churches of this country are in small towns or country com- 
munities. Their struggle for survival is important not only 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 119 

to themselves, but to the whole nation and to the foreign 
mission enterprise. For both the city church and the foreign 
mission station rest ultimately upon the foundation of the 
country church. Go into any city church and ask for a 
raising of hands to show how many adults there were 
first led into the church in a rural or village community, 
and the chances are that from fifty to seventy-five per 
cent of the adults will testify to their rural and small town 
origin. When the country church loses out in its struggle to 
survive, the doors of the city church will close soon after- 
ward, and before that happens the foreign mission enter- 
prise will have collapsed for lack of moral and financial 
support. The country church will not die, the danger is that 
it will become a chronic invalid and fail in its great mission 
of helping country people win their spiritual battles. 

What the Presbyterian Church Is Doing About It. 
Eleven years ago the Presbyterian Church, realizing the 
trend of things in the country, sent a number of men into 
the field to make careful studies of causes and remedies. 
These studies have been continued to this day. Out of 
them has come the Country Life Department's platform for 
country churches: 

One Church in Every Community 

To unite the people in worship and service; 

With the gospel and friendship for all; 

With help for every community need, whether of good 
roads, adequate schools, social life, or what not; 

With Christian leadership for every occasion and co- 
operation for every movement which contributes to 
the betterment of mankind. 

A Resident Minister in Every Community Church 

With the love of the country church and the country 

people in his heart; 
With accurate and sympathetic knowledge of his task 

and his community. 



120 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Every Community a Permanent Home 

Where no one is poor or strange or dissatisfied; 

Where men are taught how to live and work in the 
country and to support their homes, their institu- 
tions, and their community; 

Where every generation transmits a richer heritage — 
in lands and institutions and traditions — than it 
received; 

Where there is a satisfaction in the present and a faith 
in the future to inspire with a confidence of eternal 
life. 

Measuring Church Efficiency. In order that the 
country churches may measure their own efficiency in 
ministering to the needs of rural communities, a score card 
has been devised. The thirty-one points on this score card 
include: 

Social and recreational equipment, including a stage; a 
well-equipped kitchen; an organ or a piano; separate Sun- 
day-school rooms or curtained spaces for classes or depart- 
ments; stereopticon or motion-picture equipment; adequate 
sanitary toilets; horse sheds or parking space for automo- 
biles; a pastor resident within the same community as the 
church, who gives full time to the work of that church, 
conducts services every Sunday, and receives a salary of at 
least $1200 a year and house; an annual budget for all 
money raised; a yearly canvass of all members; sum for 
benevolences equal to at least twenty-five per cent of the 
current expenses; service to all racial and occupational 
groups which have not their own Protestant churches; Sun- 
day school the entire year; Sunday-school enrollment equal 
to church membership; provision for bringing pupils into 
the church; special instruction for church membership; 
teacher- training or normal class; provision for leadership 
training; systematic evangelism, aimed to reach the en- 
tire community and all classes of the community; coopera- 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 121 

tion with other churches of the community ; organized activi- 
ties for age and sex groups; cooperation with church boards 
and denominational agencies; service to the entire com- 
munity; twenty-five per cent of members with a definite 
place in some part of church activities. 1 

Summer Schools for Country Ministers. The Pres- 
byterian Church, in cooperation with other denominations, 
conducts summer schools for country ministers. These are 
graduate schools for men who are now actually working 
out the problems of the country church. Their work is 
conducted on the classroom principle. They are led by men 
selected primarily for their knowledge of rural problems. 
They deal with the important phases of community life and 
church work in the country and in villages and small towns. 
They are held as a rule in the buildings of the state col- 
lege of agriculture of various states. Their value consists 
not only in disseminating information concerning methods 
of country work, but in getting country ministers together, 
giving them new visions, renewing their courage, and filling 
their hearts with new hope. 

Practicing What We Preach. Simply preaching 
about rural conditions, setting up standards of efficiency, 
and making out programs would have little effect unless 
in our own churches we made an honest effort to practice 
what we preach. In this effort more than fifty "Demonstra- 
tion Parishes," under the direction of Dr. Warren H. 
Wilson, have been established in various parts of the country. 
Each one has a resident minister on full time. As rapidly 
as possible each one is being equipped with a building 
suited to its needs. Here is an example of one such demon- 
stration parish. Four years ago Rev. and Mrs. Sterling 

1 A pamphlet containing this score card by which you may grade 
your own church may be had for five cents from ths Board of Home 
Missions, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 



122 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Richardson were sent to the Corinth Church, five miles from 
Allen, Texas. The total membership of the church at that 
time was thirty-eight. There was no other Protestant 
church in the community. The yearly budget of the church 
was between two and three hundred dollars. Preaching was 
held but once a month by an absentee preacher. The con- 
gregation was divided into factions. When Mr. Richardson 
went to preach his first sermon not a soul showed up at the 
service. Everyone had gone to a "singing" in a neighboring 
village. Interest in the church and in religious matters 
generally was at a low ebb. The old timers had been mov- 
ing out and newcomers had taken possession of the land. 
Sixty-eight per cent of the population were tenant farmers. 
Community spirit and pride had departed. 

A community of this sort could never be revived by a 
circuit-riding preacher who came but once a month to preach 
a sermon and then left the community for another month. 

Mr. and Mrs. Richardson had come on the demonstration 
parish plan — to put all of their time and effort and prayers 
into this one community. There was no house for them to 
live in and nothing that the eye could see nor the ear could 
hear that could possibly make the church attractive for 
educated young people. They took up their residence in an 
abandoned schoolhouse. In this schoolhouse the author 
visited them months ago. 

"Why did you come to this out-of-the-way place?" he 
asked. It was Mrs. Richardson who answered. 

"My husband and I accepted a place in the country be- 
cause there was a man filled with the love of humankind and 
endowed with a persuasive tongue, who talked to us so 
convincingly of the needs of country folk that we felt in- 
spired. Until then we had believed with most people that 
the country church is a sort of ecclesiastical crutch on which 
the infirm or inefficient minister may lean in his declining 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 123 

days. It took something of the pioneer spirit to give us 
the courage to effect the change from our city parish to this 
field." 

"What was your first impression of this parish?" She 
smiled a bit ruefully. 

"I remember my first glimpse of the place that was to 
be my home. The house was this old abandoned wooden 
school building; with its roof swayed like the back of a 
Texas razorback hog, and its sharp little front porch for all 
the world like his snout. Coming upon it suddenly in a 
head-high forest of wild sunflowers and cockleburs, with 
its two doors like half-opened eyes dozing in the sun, I was 
afraid for the moment to move a step farther in its direc- 
tion. It needed only to give a 'Whoof!' to make me take 
to my heels. It was funny. I sat down on the ground and 
laughed at it. And then woman-like, I cried. I wept for 
the long-lost bathtub; for smooth, satiny floors; for the 
joys and cleanliness of electricity and gas; for all the 
creature comforts. I wept long, after the manner of my 
kind. And when I raised my head and opened my eyes 
God had prepared a wonderful surprise. The sun had set 
and there were millions of stars, so close it seemed I could 
almost reach up and touch them with my hand. A soft cool 
breeze had sprung up, filled with the very elixir of life and 
joy. A mocking bird began singing — did you ever hear 
one sing at night? — and its music was full of more beauty 
than ever was in the magic of Campanini's baton. Who 
cared for a bath? There was a purling brook near by. 
Who longed for gas? At least it was six months till winter. 
Belasco couldn't have imagined a greater scene than I had 
before me, and there was my orchestra all attuned. There- 
upon, having reached the happy norm, I girded my loins 
and went forth to see what I could see of this job." 

She and her husband went straight into the job by going 



124 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

straight into the hearts of the people, and they found the 
people wonderfully kind. For the first time in many, many 
years, the folks found what it was to have a minister in 
sickness and sorrow. No matter what their problems, they 
found in him a reassurance of the goodness and presence of 
God, and gradually they began to knit together, man and 
minister — people and God. They came to know him not 
simply as their preacher but as their friend. 

Now after four years the members of the Corinth church 
point with pride to certain spiritual and visible results. 
There has been a moral clean-up. Four years ago prosti- 
tution flourished openly. To-day it is gone. Farm ten- 
antry has been reduced from sixty-eight per cent to forty- 
nine per cent. Of course other factors besides the Church 
contributed to this end, but the Church was an important 
factor, for some farm owners testified that they would not 
have stayed in a community where there was no moral 
and spiritual training for their young people. They would 
have followed the example of other owners who had moved 
away in order to have these advantages for their children. 
The tide has been turned in favor of the community. A good 
roads club has been formed with the pastor as president. 
The district has been persuaded to vote $50,000 for pikes. 
Mrs. Richardson has a boys' class of thirty members in 
the Sunday school. The young people of the church have 
built a fence around the minister's garden and put up a 
garage beside his house. The women of the church have 
organized themselves in a missionary society and have helped 
to secure new chairs for the church and an automobile for 
their pastor. The budget of the church has increased to 
$1600 or more, and the attendance in fair weather is around 
200. In spite of the crop failures the people have raised 
more than $5000 toward a new church building. Mr. 
Richardson's eyes are bright when he talks to you about this 



IN RURAL COMMUNITIES 125 

building. "It is going to be the finest church building in 
all this section of Texas," he says. "It's going to have an 
auditorium, and a social room, and a stage, and equipment 
for educational and social work. And when that is built 
we are going after a consolidated school." 

When every Presbyterian country church is under the 
leadership of such a resident pastor, investing himself in the 
lives of the men and women and children of his parish, 
leading the forces of righteousnesss against the powers of 
isolation, individualism, and social stagnation, a new day 
will have dawned not only for the farmer and his family 
but for this nation and for the Kingdom. 

Questions for Discussion 

1. Against what is the farmer's spiritual war? 

2. What distinguishes the task of the Church from that 

of other social agencies? 

3. What social and economic changes have come about 

in the rural section during the last thirty years? 

4. How far has the Church adapted itself to these 

changes? 

5. What are the disadvantages of a too small church? 

6. What training has the average country pastor had? 

7. Discuss the circuit system in detail. Show how it 

affects Sabbath-keeping ; wastes energy; neglects 
large sections entirely; fails to present an adequate 
program for young people and immigrants ; fails 
in fairness to the minister. 

8. Why is the rural church situation important to the 

nation? 

9. In the face of such facts what is the manifest present 

task of the Church? 



126 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

10. Study what the Presbyterian Church has already done, 

ii. What is the Country Life Department's program for 
country churches? 

12. What is the value of summer schools for country 

ministers? 

13. What is meant by a "Demonstration Parish"? Il- 

lustrate. 

14. How may the efficiency of a given church be meas- 

ured? 

15. Grade your own church. What score does it make? 

Remember that the thirty-one points constitute a 
minimum, not a maximum standard. In what points 
is your church weak? What can you do about it? 



CHAPTER V 

AMONG ALASKANS AND INDIANS 

(a) Alaskans 

(b) Indians 



ALASKA 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The entire population is about 54,000, more than 
half of which is white. Two thirds of the white pop- 
ulation is composed of Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian, 
German, Irish, English, and a small representation of 
a few other stocks. The natives are divided into four 
groups: Eskimos, Aleuts, Thlingits, and Athabascans. 

The difficulties of travel and transportation over 
this vast field make missionary work a hazardous un- 
dertaking. At certain seasons of the year the trails 
become almost impassable. 

The seasonal nature of many districts in Alaska 
makes the army of migrant laborers relatively large. 

The very great preponderance of males over females 
in the population creates peculiar problems. In 1910 
there were five times as many white men as white 
women in Alaska. 

There are relatively few churches in Alaska, hun- 
dreds of square miles being without a chapel or meet- 
ing house. 

The influenza epidemic has brought about the de- 
population of certain areas and villages. This scourge 
has been particularly severe among the natives. 

Certain Protestant mission boards have been forced 
to retrench even in the face of important needs. 

The present situation demands more missionaries, a 
broader ministry, and a more generously supported 
work so that every occupied place may be reached. 

New Christian hospitals with doctors and nurses 
are particularly needed. 

There must be worked out in the near future a sys- 
tem of missionary supervision for Alaska so that a 
wise, comprehensive, and noncompetitive missionary 
program may be established. This system of super- 
vision will also be a great boon to missionaries now 
working at lonely mission stations where they rarely 
see a white face and seldom get news from the outside 
world. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



ALASKA 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Board of Home Missions the Presby- 
terian Church is striving to bring to the Alaskans the 
dynamic of the Christian religion through nine white 
and twelve native churches, and several outstations. 
At Point Barrow, the most northerly mission station 
in the world, a new hospital has just been completed. 
It is the only hospital within a radius of one thousand 
miles. 

A religious and medical work is being inaugurated 
at Cape Prince of Wales. This reaches about 500 
natives and touches also the increasing hordes on the 
Siberian shores, just fifty miles away. 

Through the Woman's Board a splendid school is 
being conducted at Sitka, Alaska, engaging seventeen 
commissioned workers, and enrolling ninety-four boys 
and girls in day school, and 150 in Sunday school. 
A medical ministry has been rendered through the 
Hydaburg Cottage Hospital, at Hydaburg, and the 
Klawock Cottage Hospital, at Bay View. These two 
hospitals served 1405 patients last year, and from 
them 2264 nursing visits were made. 

It is a noble and heroic work — but on a small scale 
compared with the efforts of the United States to se- 
cure the wealth of this great counry. If we are Chris- 
tians first, and business men second, we will develop 
the human and spiritual resources of Alaska with at 
least as much zeal as we put into the development of 
her natural resources. 



Chapter V 

(a) ALASKANS 

To anyone who writes upon Alaska these days three 
stories beckon. The first is the story of the adventures of 
the men who have prospected there for gold and copper and 
silver or who have sought their fortunes in the vast fish- 
eries or have hunted for seal and bear and deer in that 
great Empire of the Northwest. The wealth that has re- 
warded their efforts, in spite of many failures, has been 
greater than the fondest dreams of William H. Seward who 
as Secretary of State persuaded the United States Govern- 
ment to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867. The price 
we then paid was $7,200,000. Already the natural resources 
of the territory have brought to this country more than 
Si, 000. 000,000. 

The second story is a dark story. It is the story of the 
misdeeds of the men who sought their fortunes in the terri- 
tory. They left behind them a trail of vile diseases, of 
drunkenness, of immorality. The trail lives after them. It 
is registered in the faces of many of the natives ; worse than 
that, it is in their very blood and day after day its tragic 
consequences are seen in stillbirths, insanity, and loathsome 
sores. It is a trail that all decent men regard with shame, 
and want to eradicate from America's history. 

The third story is more appealing. It is the story of the 
constructive work of the men and women who have given 
their lives to bring to the people of Alaska the best that 
America has — education, social service, and the Christian 

130 



ALASKANS 131 

religion. Presbyterians were the first to volunteer for this 
work and what they have done is a thing of which the na- 
tion as well as the Church may be proud. 

The Story of Sheldon Jackson. It was Dr. Sheldon 
Jackson who established the Presbyterian Church in Alaska. 
He was a man of tremendous energy, undaunted 
courage, broad sympathy, and statesman-like vision. His 
first trip to Alaska was made a few years after the purchase 
of the territory. He underwent shipwreck, exposure, sick- 
ness, and trials of a hundred kinds. But he also organized 
churches, established schools, and located doctors. At the 
same time he studied the natural resources of the territory 
and kept the Government at Washington informed of his 
results. Becoming convinced that the economic and social 
development of the country waited upon a greater food 
supply and better transportation facilities he persuaded the 
government to make experiments introducing the reindeer, 
an animal that serves as substitute for the cow, sheep, and 
horse, for it provides meat, milk, clothing, and transporta- 
tion. The failure of one or two of these experiments called 
down upon his head the anger of political enemies of the ad- 
ministration and he was nicknamed "Shell-Game" Jackson. 
But in the end the experiments succeeded and the few hun- 
dred reindeer originally introduced have now multiplied until 
they number nearly 200,000 and constitute one of Alaska's 
greatest economic assets. 

Educational Work. The educational policy Dr. Jack- 
son founded in Alaska was as farsighted as his economic 
policy. Finding no schools, the Presbyterian Church, under 
his leadership, established them side by side with its 
missions, and always with the understanding that as soon as 
the Government was prepared to take over the schools as 
part of the territorial system, the Church would relinquish 
them. The breadth of this policy and the excellence of the 



i 3 2 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

schools established soon resulted in Dr. Jackson's appoint- 
ment as Government Agent for Education in Alaska. It also 
resulted in the establishment of the Sheldon Jackson School 
at Sitka. 

The Sheldon Jackson School. It was first opened in 
1880 as a mission day school, but as the years went by in 
its attempt to meet the actual educational needs of the 
young people of Alaska, it developed into a boarding school. 
In 1909 the school was thoroughly equipped for industrial 
and academic work and named in honor of Dr. Jackson, 
"pioneer organizer and missionary by whose foresight and 
missionary zeal a large tract of land comprising the school's 
property had been secured and through whose untiring 
efforts and wholesome enthusiasm the buildings had been 
erected, the equipment furnished, and the work maintained." 
Since then the school plant has grown until to-day it com- 
prises four dormitories, a school building containing a gym- 
nasium, and a central heating plant, with steam laundry 
attached. There is also an industrial building containing 
machinery and carpenter shop, a hydro-electric power plant, 
and a print shop. Beside these buildings there is a museum, 
and three cottages for the families of the married workers. 
The school is filled to its capacity with students repre- 
senting more than twenty communities of southeastern 
Alaska. 

The Aim of the School is "to build up strong, sound 
bodies; to train girls in the art of Christian home-making, 
and boys as competent wage earners; and to develop 
Christian leadership. " The course of study takes the stu- 
dents from the first grade through the high school. The girls 
are taught sewing, cooking, laundry, and other housework. 
The boys are trained for steam fitting and for work in 
machine shops, carpenter shops, and printing shops, and 
above all and through all is the spiritual training. To train 




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ALASKANS 133 

the head and the hand without training the heart and the 
spirit would not be true to our ideals of Christian education. 
For the first aim of Christian education is to develop char- 
acter, and the Sheldon Jackson School stands first of all for 
such development. 

During the summer months the older students go out into 
salmon canneries or on the fishing boats which supply the 
canneries. The younger students remain at the school for 
a summer course of study which is enlivened by camping, 
picnics, and other activities to keep up the spirits of the 
boys and girls and to maintain their health. 

Results. Now after eleven years of such training under 
the revised curriculum the workers in the school point to 
the fact that the great majority of leaders in patriotic and 
civic enterprises in all of the native villages of southeastern 
Alaska were at one time students in the Sheldon Jackson 
School. The characters they have developed and the knowl- 
edge they have acquired have won them the confidence of 
their own people and they are being elected to the responsi- 
ble offices in the newly organized government of their local 
communities. 

A Revolting Custom Is Being Eliminated. One of 
the best results of the school is its influence in combating 
the primitive custom of selling young women in marriage. 
The revolting custom is surely being eliminated — but not 
without difficulty. Superintendent McKean thus describes 
the struggle: 

The cannery life is only one of our difficulties at present. 
One large girl who did not return had been here for three 
years, summer and winter. Her people wanted her to take 
care of the children during the summer, at least that is the 
way they put the matter up to us, and there was no way that 
we could hold her against their wish. What she found 
when she reached home was that a marriage was all arranged 
for her and although she wanted to return to school and 



i 3 4 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

bring two other members of the family with her, she was 
forced to marry a man for whom she had no regard what- 
ever. The girl was just sixteen years old. When another 
pupil reached her home she found the man whom her 
parents planned for her to marry, right at her home with 
her parents, waiting for her. The girl rebelled but the 
man stayed until her parents had succeeded in forcing her 
to do as they wished. One of the discouraging features of 
the work here is that of having girls remain at the school 
until they reach maturity and then to be taken away by 
parents or relatives and forced into marriage. The old cus- 
tom of selling daughters into matrimony as soon as they 
approach maturity is gradually giving way, but old customs 
die exceedingly hard. The uncle of one of our girls had a 
marriage all planned for her and money had already been 
paid to him by the man to whom he intended to sell his 
niece. The girl's sister is also one of our pupils, a high- 
school pupil who had passed the examination for citizenship 
and she knew that her sister did not have to submit. With 
their combined earnings last summer these girls paid back 
to the man the amount he had given to the uncle and both 
girls returned to school last fall. 

The Most Northerly Mission Station in the World. 

A Lieutenant Commander of the United States Navy re- 
ported to Dr. Jackson in the fall of 1882 the degraded con- 
ditions of the Eskimos in Northern Alaska. Dr. Jackson 
enlisted the cooperation of the United States Commissioner 
of Education in a plan of establishing schools in this section 
under the supervision of well-known missionary organiza- 
tions. Various denominations were appealed to, but owing 
to their impoverished treasuries no one could help. In this 
emergency Dr. Jackson appealed to Mrs. Elliot F. Shepard, 
who agreed to provide the money for a mission school and 
station at Point Barrow, if the Woman's Board of Home 
Missions would undertake the oversight. This offer was 
accepted and for many years Mrs. Shepard continued to 
furnish the salary of the missionary at this station. 



ALASKANS 135 

In the spring of 1890 a call was sent out for a missionary 
to volunteer for service at Point Barrow, a call which em- 
phasized the privations that must be endured and the 
perils encountered. Professor L. M. Stevenson answered 
and in July of that year he "was landed with his supplies 
and left alone to begin his work. In this dreary and deso- 
late place, which is farther north than the North Cape in 
Europe; where the long Arctic day and night were each 
nearly three months long; where the outlook on the sea- 
ward side both summer and winter was a perpetual ice field, 
stretching northward toward the pole; where in the autumn 
and spring great whales sported before his front door and 
in the winter polar bears prowled around his cabin, this 
courageous herald of a higher civilization and a better life 
gathered the children and older people together and gave 
them their first lessons in the English language and the 
elementary branches of human knowledge." * 

Point Barrow To-Day. Thirty years have passed 
since Professor Stevenson opened this most northerly mis- 
sion in the world. The school is now a Government insti- 
tution and the Church is devoting itself to a spiritual and 
medical ministry and to another and much needed service 
— the establishment of a hospital. There are two church 
buildings, twelve miles apart. In both of them services are 
held every Sunday of the year — even when the tempera- 
ture is 30 ° below zero and there is no fuel. Prayer meet- 
ing is held every Wednesday evening and Intermediate and 
Junior Christian Endeavor every Wednesday afternoon. 
All of them are attended by all the people in the village 
except the sick. Dr. Spence writes this account: "Nearly 
the usual number of people were here on Easter but they 
were much later coming in than usual, many not reaching 
the village until a day or so before. Only one joined the 
1 Stewart, Sheldon Jackson. 



i 3 6 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Church this year because everyone who could had already 
joined. There were only nine baptisms this year, the 
smallest number since we came. This was due to the 
large number of stillbirths and a few being away at Easter." 

The New Hospital. One of the most important pieces 
of social service which the Presbyterian Church has under- 
taken, is the establishment of a hospital at Point Barrow. 
It is the most northerly hospital in the world. It is the only 
hospital within a radius of a thousand miles. It is the 
fruit of the missionaries' efforts, and especially of the past 
five years of heroic work of Dr. and Mrs. Frank H. Spence, 
who have put the best of their fine training and Christian 
characters into the task. It will serve more than a thousand 
human beings. 

The need of the hospital is seen in these conditions: The 
Eskimos live in igloos of one small room each, two or more 
families to an igloo. There is little light and less ventila- 
tion. When you remember that in almost every igloo from 
one to many have died of tuberculosis (it was the white man 
that brought the germs), and children are being born and 
brought up in close proximity to people who are now sick 
with tuberculosis, you can understand why so many Eskimos 
are dying with that dread disease. Moreover, as Dr. Spence 
writes: "Since the white man came to this northland he has 
exploited the native. He began by ravaging their women, 
transmitting through them a disease far more dreadful in 
its results to posterity than tuberculosis, both being in- 
tensified and much harder to cure when combined. Many 
have been and are the women with loathsome sores; far 
too many are stillbirths; far too many are the number of 
incompetents. One child born this year was without the top 
of his head. One woman has had two children, both of 
them losing their minds in early childhood. There 
are too many blind people here for the number of inhabi- 



ALASKANS 137 

tants. One little girl now only four years old, is afflicted 
with the same trouble and likely to lose her sight. One boy 
at the Point is paralyzed and helpless from the same cause. 
When you see all these things it makes your heart ache 
and I cannot tell it all." 

To these conditions must be added the ignorance of the 
people as the greatest handicap to any sort of treatment, 
medical or surgical, in their igloos. Their ignorance is 
appalling ; they are only thirty years removed from heathen- 
ism. A hospital is an absolute essential, not only for effec- 
tive medical work but for the very salvation of these people 
from extinction. We Americans are more or less informed 
of the wonderful work of Dr. Grenfell for Labrador, a 
thousand miles farther south than Barrow. But here is a 
place even more remote and neglected, and until now no 
hospitals or nurses within a thousand miles. Surely if the 
people of Labrador needed medical or surgical help these 
people need it more. They are worthy people. The world 
depends upon them, and them alone, to make available the 
vast resources of copper and oil of northern Alaska. No 
other race can stand the cold. The late Archdeacon Stuck 
said of them: "There cannot be anywhere else such brave 
and resolute and light-hearted folk in such an utterly 
barren and naked land, pitting themselves against such 
ferocity of wind and cold." 

Recognizing this need the Presbyterian Church has under- 
taken the task of establishing the hospital, the funds being 
generously provided by the Commonwealth Fund of New 
York City. The hospital was designed by D. Everett Waid, 
who contributed his services for the good of the cause. 
Last spring the materials for it were assembled at Seattle. 
In July it was put on shipboard and after various experiences 
it finally reached Point Barrow in August. Fortunate! for 
this is the first year in three that the U.S.S. Bear has been 



138 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

able to get that far north. When completed the hospital 
will represent an investment of about $50,000. 

Just in Time. The hospital is arriving just in time to 
give first aid to Dr. and Mrs. Spence themselves. Five 
years of unremitting labor, the ignorance of the people, the 
penetrating cold, the dearth of fuel and of the conveniences 
of civilized life, the lack of sympathetic contact with their 
own kind, have all but broken these brave workers. We 
think we have troubles when coal is $15 to $20 a ton and 
hard to get, but at Point Barrow the net cost of coal is nearly 
$100 a ton, due to the enormous freight rates from Seattle, 
where it is necessary to go for the main part of the supply. 
Even at this rate good coal is obtainable only in case the 
ocean is free from ice long enough for a vessel to get to 
this suburb of the north pole. Shipping space is also diffi- 
cult to secure and to do more effective work the mission 
should have its own boat, as do the Methodist Missions in 
Northwest Alaska. When the thermometer gets as high as 
2 5 below zero, Dr. Spence shuts off the furnace in his 
house and the family exists by kitchen fire. 

But this year Dr. and Mrs. Spence have had unusual 
difficulties. He writes: "In many ways the year has been 
the hardest one since we came. We do not refer to the lack 
of coal. All the services have been kept up in the church 
with little or no fire, most of the time none at all, but they 
were all attended by everyone in the village. The ther- 
mometer was most of the time at or near 25 below zero 
and sometimes lower. The breath of the people would 
form a white vapor in the church. Had only one fire at 
the mission all winter and the one room was kitchen, dining 
room, bedroom, living room, office room, drug room, sur- 
gery room, and dispensary. These, however, are only minor 
difficulties and are easily endured. It is in the spiritual 
work that the strain lies. 



ALASKANS 139 

"Because of some of the things we have been through 
this year the health of Mrs. Spence and myself is very much 
impaired. The last of May I suffered from what at the 
time I supposed was a slight attack of snow blindness in 
my right eye but I found it was some serious trouble and 
that I had a much more serious condition in the left eye. 
Mrs. Spence is needing the care of an oculist and a dentist 
so we are hoping the way will open for our going out. 

"The thing that embarrasses us is our request a year ago 
to remain, but at that time we were in fairly good health 
and knew nothing of what the year had in store for us." 

As this book is written these missionaries are being re- 
lieved. The Home Board is looking now for a new doctor, 
with sufficient courage and skill and consecration to take 
Dr. Spence's place. 

The Unfinished Task in Alaska. These bits of his- 
tory and description of Presbyterian effort in Alaska are 
only bits. If the whole story could be told it would include 
the heroism and consecration that have been invested in the 
hospital at Sitka, the boarding schools at Chilkat, Wrangell, 
Hyda, and Juneau, and in the nine white and twelve native 
churches and the several outstations. Slowly but surely 
these hospitals, schools, and churches have been inculcating 
in the whites, the Indians, and Eskimos the higher ideals 
of the Christian religion, in education, health, and brother- 
hood. And all the while they have been drawing the people 
closer to God. The Thlingits and Hydas of southeastern 
Alaska can now be called Christian people. They have 
left their paganism and heathen customs, and the younger 
generation at least no longer holds to the superstitions that 
held these tribes in a bondage of fear. 

But what has been done is only a foundation for what 
remains. Remember that the natives throughout Alaska 
are only thirty years removed from paganism, that many 



140 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

communities are yet untouched by Christian effort, and 
that many missions stand vacant for want of men and money 
to man them. The Congregational Church has turned over 
to us the important and successful mission at Cape Prince 
of Wales on Bering Strait. We have just sent Dr. W. H. 
Greist, an experienced and devoted medical missionary, to 
take charge of it. A large number of Indians, heathen and 
living in their primitive state in the great Kuskuquim Valley, 
have recently been reported. Many Eskimo villages are 
without any religious work. 

Moreover, there have been rumors that the political 
government of Alaska needs a house-cleaning, and is about 
to get it. Dan Sutherland, the man who, when Alaska went 
dry by referendum in 191 6, journeyed at his own expense 
to Washington and put through Congress a law making pro- 
hibition effective in the territory, has been elected Alaska's 
representative in Congress. A new code of laws designed 
to untangle the web of bureaucratic statutes, and cut the 
bonds that fetter Alaska, has been prepared and will prob- 
ably be presented to the next Congress. 

These things are mentioned here not because they are 
matters for the immediate concern of the Church as an or- 
ganization, but because if they come to pass they will have 
much to do with bringing into the territory a new flood of 
population and it is the concern of the Church that the 
religious needs of this new population be provided for, 
and that never again may Alaska be cursed with such a 
trail of immorality and vice as has been left by previous 
expeditions. All who have studied this land are convinced 
of its greatness. It is a land of opportunity. It would be 
an everlasting disgrace to America if we developed the 
natural resources of the land and left the spiritual resources 
of its 54,000 human beings undeveloped. 



ALASKANS 141 



Questions for Discussion 

1. When was Alaska purchased? Of what country? 

At what price? Through whose influence? 

2. Look up its size, climate, and population. 

3. What are its natural resources? How valuable? 

4. What types of white men have gone into Alaska? 

5. Who was Sheldon Jackson? Why did he introduce 

reindeer into Alaska? How did he come to be ap- 
pointed Government agent for education in Alaska? 

6. Describe the Sheldon Jackson School. What was its 

object? How far has it been successful? 

7. Describe Point Barrow. When was mission work 

started there? Through whom indirectly and 
directly? 

8. What is the Point Barrow situation to-day? 

9. Make a list of the hardships the Point Barrow mis- 

sionaries have faced. 

10. What remains to be done in Alaska in education; in 
evangelistic work; in Americanization; in health 
and hygiene? 



INDIANS 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The total number of Indians in the continental 
United States is approximately 334,000. They are 
divided into tribal bands and clans exceeding 150 in 
number, all speaking different languages and dialects 
and scattered on 147 reservations and in different 
communities in practically every state of the Union. 

The Indian of the old trail was a religious being. 
The very perils and hardships of the chase and war- 
path created in him a longing for some relationship 
with the unseen world of mystery about him. 

But the old Indian has passed on, leaving behind 
chiefly such vestiges of the old regime as war paint 
and feathers, bow and arrow, blanket and moccasin. 

The Indian of to-day is just coming into citizenship. 
He must meet the demands of this new transition pe- 
riod. He has entered upon the highway of knowl- 
edge and cannot turn back to the old trails. 

Less than one third of the Indian population is 
related to the various Christian communions; ap- 
proximately 46,000 are neglected by Christian agen- 
cies and unreached by Roman Catholic or Protestant 
missionaries. 

Nine thousand Indian youths heard their country's 
call in the late war and left their tribal clans to fight 
for liberty. Six thousand were volunteers. 

American Volume — Interchurch Survey. 



INDIANS 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions 
the Church conducts educational work by means of 
boarding schools at Marble City, Oklahoma; Ganado 
and Tucson, Arizona; Won Point, Montana; and 
North Fork, California; and day schools at Indian 
Oasis and Vah-ki. Thirty-five commissioned workers 
are engaged in these schools. Their total enrollment 
last year was 420 and they taught also 415 pupils in 
Sunday school. Community stations are conducted 
at Lapwai, Idaho, and Neah Bay, Washington. .A 
medical ministry is carried on thiough the hospital 
at Ganado, Arizona, and the hospital at Indian Wells. 
These two hospitals last year engaged forty-three 
commissioned workers and ministered to 1320 pa- 
tients. 

Through the Board of Home Missions religious and 
educational work is carried on in nineteen states 
among Gfty different tribes, ranging from the Da- 
kotas, who are four fifths Christian, to the nearly 
heathen Papagoes. During the past year two hun- 
dred churches and preaching stations have been cared 
for, by sixty-six ordained ministers, thirty-five unor- 
dained white preachers, and thirty-five native helpers. 
This Board also maintains hospitals and Bible training 
schools at Phoenix, Arizona; Santee, Nebraska; and 
Lapwai, Idaho. 

It is excellent work — but at this rate how long will 
it take us to Christianize the 12,000,000 Indians in 
North, South, and Central America? 



(b) INDIANS 

Why the Task Is Difficult. No work of the Presby- 
terian Church in America is more difficult than that among 
the Indians. The chief reason for its difficulty is the white 
man's record among the Inaians. We began by selling the 
Indian fire water; then we took away his land; next we 
crowded him on to reservations ; finally we sent our mission- 
aries to him to convert him to our religion! If the cases 
were reversed and the Indians were the lords of the land 
and we were upon reservations, they would probably find 
missionary work among us just as difficult. The fact does 
not excuse us from making the effort; on the contrary it is 
an added reason why after such treatment the white race 
should now be anxious to see that the Indian receives 
justice and the best rather than the worst that civilization 
has to offer him. That best is our religion, our education, 
and all that we know about industry, farming, the science 
of health, and the art of home-making. 

The Indian of To-Day. He is not the same being that 
Longfellow exalted in "Hiawatha," or Cooper in "Leather- 
stocking Tales." The Indian of those stories was primarily 
a religious being. "The very perils and hardships of the 
chase and warpath created in him a longing for some re- 
lationship with the unseen but apparent world of mystery 
round about him." But the Indian of to-day is another 
being. The chase and the warpath are gone. Neither in 
muscle nor stature is the average red man anything like 
his ancestors. White man's whisky and white man's dis- 
eases, chiefly tuberculosis, have played their havoc with the 

144 



INDIANS 145 

red man's body. A drug — peyote or mescal — worse in 
its effects than alcohol or opium, has ruined the minds and 
nervous systems of many of his fellows. His home to-day 
is a small shack practically without ventilation. And his 
religion has degenerated even more than his body and his 
home. Abandoning his nature worship and his paganism, 
he has put nothing better in their places. 

The Task as a Whole. The task of Christian America 
is, then, to redeem the Indians, physically, mentally, mor- 
ally, and spiritually There are in this country 334,000 
of this race. Only 120,000 of them speak English. Only 
79,000 are citizens. Only 26,000 are voters. Less than 
one half of the Indian population is related to the various 
Christian communions. We must win the rest. We must 
lead them all step by step and man by man out of their 
ignorance and degradation into fellowship with God. We 
must develop a native Christian leadership. We must hold 
the young people who come back from school and see that 
they do not lapse into their former state, but consecrate 
their education to the good of their less fortunate fellows. 
We must replace the superstitions of the old medicine men 
with the best that modern medical skill can do to heal their 
diseases and to build up their health. 

An Example of Constructive Evangelical and 
Social Work Among Indians. Fifty years ago Dr. 
Charles H. Cook might have been arrested for having no 
visible means of support, for he started his work on the 
Pima Reservation with nothing at all except a boundless 
faith in God and human nature. He had no salary and no 
material equipment. He had read an article by an army 
officer depicting the needs of the Pima Indians of Arizona, 
and appealing for missionaries to come and help them. 
Unable to find any Board or Church that could send him, 
Dr. Cook had struck out "on his own." He had journeyed 



146 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

part way by train, and the rest of the way on foot and by 
mule and by ox train. Four months it took him to reach 
the Pima agency. There in the fullness of time he received 
an appointment as a Government teacher, and then he went 
to work in earnest. 

He soon found that he had before him not only the 
task of bringing the Indian into fellowship with God in 
the Christian way, but he must needs fight against the 
white men who were encroaching upon the Indians' lands 
and especially upon their water rights to such an extent 
that the Indians would have starved to death if they had 
not had his strong leadership. Dr. Charles L. Thompson 
describes the struggle: 

The white man came to the borders of the reservation 
and the Indian as always must suffer. Settlers on the banks 
of the Gila River above the reservation in ditch after ditch 
took off its waters until almost none was left for those 
Indians who had always been self-supporting and self- 
respecting; whose lives had been lives of peace and industry; 
who had stood with the Government against the Apaches in 
time of war, and who had every claim on the Government 
for protection from the ravages of the incoming white popu- 
lation. 

The soul of Dr. Cook was stirred to vigorous action. He 
appealed to mission Boards, to churches, and to the Govern- 
ment to save his people. It was a long, hard fight with 
robbers who had stolen the waters which alone make pos- 
sible the very existence of the Indian. But they had a man 
to deal with who counted on the reserves of the Almighty. 
And in good measure he was permitted to see the victory 
before he laid down his armor. 

Fifty years have passed since that heroic beginning. 
Dr. Cook has been called to his reward, and Rev. Dirk Lay, 
a stalwart young giant with the mind and heart of the true 
prophet, has taken up his work. To-day twelve churches 







3 



-a 
6 
H 



3 
O 
43 



G 



^2 .2 

O <U 

§ bib 

tfl O 

S-i o 



-a 

<u 

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o 

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44 
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si 

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INDIANS 147 

with a membership of 2000, and with a Sunday-school en- 
rollment of more than 2000, are visible results of the mis- 
sionaries' efforts. The small mission Dr. Cook built has 
been supplanted by a magnificent stucco building erected by 
the Indians themselves. At the fifteenth anniversary serv- 
ice held a few months ago, 600 Pimas crowded this build- 
ing, and one of them, Edward Jackson, twenty-seven years 
a native helper, was ordained a minister, and conducted the 
Communion service with reverence and dignity. 

Through all these years the rights of the Indians have 
been increasingly protected, and gradually, through the 
faith and practical helpfulness of Rev. Dirk Lay, they have 
established a modern agricultural community. Recently a 
great financier thought highly enough of the integrity of 
these Christian Indians to back them to the extent of half 
a million dollars with no legal security for the development 
of their farms. 

An Illustration of Medical Work Among Indians. 
Thirty-six hundred square miles is the field covered by 
Dr. Gary Burke and his wife, Dr. Alice Burke, among 
the Navajos. The Indians are scattered widely over 
these 3600 square miles so that one patient to ten miles 
of travel is the average. The work centers at Ganado, 
Arizona, where there is a hospital and dispensary and also 
the Kirkwood Memorial School. From this center the doc- 
tors journey by horseback or buggy to the homes of the In- 
dians, and three times a month make a forty-seven-mile trip 
to Indian Wells where there is another hospital. Approxi- 
mately 300 patients are treated monthly with the result 
that the Indians are fast forsaking their medicine men with 
their songs and dances and learning the more modern and 
scientific ways of caring for their bodies. And along with 
this knowledge they are finding the Christian friendship 
of the doctors. 



148 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

A glimpse of Dr. Burke's work is given in this letter from 
him: 

Saturday noon Mr. Smith, the minister, and I started to 
see a patient, a young girl who had been ill for two months. 
The medicine men had not been able to help her. She lived 
thirty-three miles from Ganado. It was thawing and the 
roads were getting muddy but we got along all right. We 
arrived at a trading post twenty-five miles from Ganado 
about five o'clock and we stayed there all night. The next 
morning we got a guide and went on to see the patient. We 
found her quite ill but not hopeless. I asked that she be 
brought to the hospital at Ganado but her people did not 
even know that there was a hospital at Ganado for it has 
been closed about four years. They were dubious about 
bringing their loved one to a place about which they knew 
nothing. They asked me all kinds of questions about my 
own ability and about the hospital equipment and then to 
be sure about it they asked the minister on the side if I 
was telling the truth. They even asked if we had beds in 
the hospital. I did all I could for her there in the hogan 
and left with the promise that they would bring her to the 
hospital inside of five days. Since then there has been a 
terrible thaw and the roads are about impassable and the 
girl has not arrived at the hospital yet. 

After attending the girl I started working in the dif- 
ferent hogans in that camp and for four hours I went from 
one to the other trying to give relief from physical suffer- 
ing the best I could. Sometimes it was only a trivial thing, 
other times something more serious. After tending all 
who needed us we drove back to the trading post where we 
had been the night before, getting back at five o'clock, hav- 
ing had nothing to eat all day. That night I retired about 
eight o'clock and after I had turned in some more patients 
came to the trading post to see me. The trader would not 
call me and told them to come back in the morning early 
as we were going on to Indian Wells the next morning, that 
place being only thirty miles from Indian Wells. The next 
morning, sure enough, two patients came in to see me and 
I treated them. I had treated twenty patients in the two 
days. 



INDIANS 149 

We drove the thirty miles to Indian Wells without mis- 
hap stopping at a little lake to have dinner where we had 
to chop a hole in the ice to water our horses and where we 
cooked our dinner in three inches of mud. We had mud 
in everything except some fruit cake that some thoughtful 
friend had sent out for Christmas and which had lasted 
until that trip. We got to Indian Wells at sunset having 
driven the horses 100 miles in four days. We laid up there 
for three days and I did what I could for the hospital 
cases and the dispensary patients. There are always a 
number of patients who plan on coming in when I am go- 
ing to be there. Friday morning we started for Ganado 
and we found the roads very muddy and badly washed 
out in places. I was anxious to get to Ganado and so de- 
spite the mud we tried to come clear through in one day. 
It took us fourteen hours and in that time we gave the horses 
fifty minutes rest to eat a nosebag of oats and drink a little 
water from a mountain stream. Of course darkness fell be- 
fore we reached Ganado and the road was washed out so 
that we never knew quite what was going to happen next. 
We tipped over once and had to dig out of the hole we were 
in so the horses could pull the buggy back on its wheels 
as it was so heavy with mud that we could not lift it. We 
got out with no serious trouble to either us or the buggy 
and came on to within a mile of the hospital at Ganado 
when we got stuck in some quicksand while crossing the 
big river called the Pueblo Colorado. The horses pulled 
on the buggy until they started to break the whiffletrees 
when we stopped them and climbed out in the icy water 
up to our knees and unhitched them and walked home. I 
then got a man and a wagon and we went down and hitched 
on to the rear axle of the buggy and pulled it out. We 
came home, got into dry clothes, fed the horses and our- 
selves and got to bed at 3.00 a.m. 

The next morning at nine a man came running in for us 
to come quick to see his wife. We questioned him and 
found that she really was in need of immediate help so 
I saddled a pair of tired horses and Dr. Alice and I started 
again, hiring another horse so that we might take with us 
our woman interpreter. We rode about ten miles up a 
valley and came to a little hogan with a very sick woman in 



150 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

it. We found that we would have to give her an anaesthetic 
and so we had them take out all the fire as they always 
have open fires, and there upon the ground we gave her an 
anaesthetic and fixed her up. Two days later I returned 
to find her doing nicely. It is now January 27, Tuesday. 
I have been in Ganado just two whole days since Jan- 
uary 1. 

The Task That Remains. The work of our doctors 
and teachers and ministers, valuable as it all is, will never 
bear its full fruit unless we develop a native ministry among 
the Indians. This is the first and foremost task that re- 
mains. Every missionary upon the field bears testimony 
that the crying need among the Indians is an adequately 
trained and consecrated native leadership. At present there 
is no system of recruiting young men of piety and promise 
to dedicate their lives to the service of God in either min- 
istry, teaching, or medical work, and these are the very 
lines of service which the Indians need most. 

Second in importance to the need of a native leader- 
ship is the need of a resident ministry. Altogether too 
many missionaries among the Indians have followed the 
circuit-riding plan which has wrought havoc with the coun- 
try church. Like the itinerant rural minister the itinerant 
Indian missionary preaches at one station one Sunday and 
then moves on to another station the next Sunday and so 
on around three or four stations, never staying at one com- 
munity long enough to develop a genuine, helpful friend- 
ship and leadership in local affairs. 

Finally we must help the Indian develop his social 
life. He is just learning the white man's method of farming 
and industry and play. It is of utmost importance to the 
salvation of his own spirit and to the welfare of those with 
whom he comes in contact, that the Indian as he takes 
his place in modern social life has in his heart an under- 



INDIANS 151 

standing of the duties and responsibilities as well as the 
privileges of social life. The Indian of to-day is an indi- 
vidualist to the last degree; the Indian of to-morrow must 
be a more social creature; more willing to give, to serve 
and to fulfill the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." 



Questions for Discussion 

1. Describe the present-day Indians as to numbers; loca- 

tion; occupation; language; civic status; physical 
condition ; religion . 

2. What is the white man's obligation? 

3. What has the Presbyterian Church done already? 

4. What are the peculiar difficulties in Indian work? 

Describe the work of Dr. Cook and his successor, 
Rev. Dirk Lay. 

5. Illustrate the medical work. 

6. What remains to be done? 



CHAPTER VI 
THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 

THE CHALLENGE 
Of the Field 

The United States of America has been invaded by 
three enemy armies which threaten our national ex- 
istence. First, there is within our borders an army 
of five and one-half million illiterates above nine years 
of age; second, there is an army of fifty million peo- 
ple above nine years of age who are not identified 
with any church — Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant; 
third, there is an army of twenty-seven million 
Protestant children and youth, under twenty-five years 
of age, who are not enrolled in any Sunday school or 
other institution for religious training. 

If these three armies should form in double column, 
three feet apart, they would reach one and one-fifth 
times around the globe at the equator. If they should 
march in review before the President of the United 
States, moving double column at the rate of twenty- 
five miles a day, it would take the three armies three 
years and five months to pass the President. 

These three interlocking armies constitute a triple 
alliance which threatens the life of our democracy. 
Patriotism demands that every loyal American enlist 
for service and wage three great campaigns — a cam- 
paign of Americanization, a campaign of adult evan- 
gelism, and a campaign for the spiritual nurture of 
childhood. 

American Volume — Inter church Survey. 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 

THE ANSWER 
Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 

The Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work 
is the agency of the Presbyterian Church to which the 
whole task of providing for the religious education of 
the children and youth has been assigned. Its main 
function is "the promotion of the nurture of the chil- 
dren and youth in Christian knowledge and life.'* Its 
program includes extending the agencies of religious 
education, developing and promoting policies and 
methods, and providing and disseminating materials 
such as Sunday-school lessons, tracts, periodicals, and 
books. More than 1,300,000 publications were issued 
last year. Twenty-nine hundred and fourteen Sun- 
day schools enrolling 118,129 children and adults 
are under the care of Sabbath-school missionaries. 
Twenty new Presbyterian churches were developed in 
this work last year, and since 1887 nearly 2000 Pres- 
byterian churches have grown from the Sunday schools 
established by this Board. One hundred and £fty- 
three Sabbath-school missionaries are commissioned in 
this work. 

The Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work 
in cooperation with the Board of Home Missions is 
conducting 237 Daily Vacation Bible Schools enrolling 
2 7>749 children. A special effort is directed toward 
maintaining these schools among immigrant children 
in connection with the churches of foreign-speaking 
peoples. 

In a number of urban and rural sections week-day 
classes and community schools have been organized 
for religious instruction during the school year. 

An admirable record; but the major task is still 
ahead of us, for systematic religious education is still 
the blessing of the minority only, and the great masses 
of American and immigrant children are growing up 
without it. 



Chapter VI 

THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 

Fundamental to All Other Work. Thus far we have 
considered great national tasks of the Church. Now we 
come closer home to a task which is fundamental to all the 
rest. It is the task of training the children of America in 
the Christian life — the task of Christian education. "If 
you would point to the weakest spot in the Protestant 
Church," says Dr. Walter S. Athearn, "you would put your 
finger on the army of 27,000,000 children and youth in our 
own land who are growing up in spiritual illiteracy, and 
16,000,000 other American Protestant children whose re- 
ligious instruction is limited to a brief half hour once a 
week, often sandwiched in between a delayed preaching 
service and an American Sunday dinner. Let it be burned 
into the minds of the leaders of the Church that a Church 
which cannot save its own children can never save the 
world." 

Christian Education Is a Missionary Enterprise. 
Under the terms of the great commission every enterprise 
which is concerned in any manner in the promotion of 
Christ's Kingdom is in the widest and truest sense a mission- 
ary agency. Recognizing the necessity and importance of 
proclaiming the gospel message to the benighted in heathen 
lands and to the neglected within our own borders, by those 
whom we specifically designate as "missionaries," our con- 
ception of the missionary task covers a wider scope and 

156 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 157 

includes other forms of service in Kingdom building. Pas- 
tors, Sunday-school workers, leaders in young people's or- 
ganizations, and all who labor especially for the Christian 
nurture of childhood and youth, even Christian parents 
gathering their children about the family altar, teaching 
them the principles of Christian living and training them 
for service, are helping to answer the petition "Thy kingdom 
come" and are likewise missionaries. Indeed the mission- 
ary task is impossible of achievement without the fulfillment 
of our obligation to provide for the religious education of 
children and youth. 

Jesus' View of the Importance of the Child in the 
Kingdom of God. It was Jesus who first taught the world 
the potentialities of childhood. To the child he accorded the 
foremost place in the Kingdom. He exalted childhood when 
he said," Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name 
receiveth me." When mothers thronged about him with 
their children he gathered the little ones in his arms and laid 
his hand in benediction upon them. When his disciples would 
rebuke them and send them away he restrained them with the 
words, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not; for to such belongeth the kingdom of God." He 
likewise condemned those who by design or through neglect 
would place any obstacle in the way of their entrance into 
the Kingdom when he said, "Whosoever shall cause one of 
these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were better 
for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and 
he were cast into the sea." How significant of his concern 
for the child was his answer to the questions of his disciples 
concerning the expected Kingdom. When "He called to him 
a little child, and set him in the midst of them" he set the 
example for the Church throughout all the ages. He might 
have said; "Here is your greatest problem. Train the child 
aright and my Kingdom will be hastened." 



158 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

The Weakest Point in the Protestant Church. 
The Protestant Church in theory holds, of course, Jesus' 
view of the importance of the child in the Kingdom of God, 
but in practice we have not been working very hard at the 
theory. The religious training which the average Protestant 
child receives is less than 26 hours per year. The average 
Catholic child receives 200 hours per year and the average 
Jewish child 335 hours per year. 

The situation is worse when we are informed that the en- 
rollment in our Sunday schools is on the decline rather than 
on the increase. In 191 5 the Presbyterian Sunday-school 
enrollment in the United States was 1,375,875. In 19 19 it 
had fallen to 1,319,416. Add to this the fact that half of the 
students enrolled in Presbyterian Sunday schools attend less 
than half the time, and you have some conception of the in- 
adequate amount of religious training the Protestant Church 
is giving its children. A large army of children is growing 
into manhood and womanhood without a moral foundation 
for citizenship. The surveys of the Interchurch World 
Movement have revealed the very definite relations between 
Sunday-school enrollment and church membership. The 
great national denominations which are holding their own 
or growing, are denominations who are giving their time and 
attention to the development of their Sunday schools. 

Some Lessons From the War. A committee of the 
Federal Council of Churches after studying reports from 
hundreds of chaplains, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, and other 
religious leaders of our boys in the war, report that there 
was a general agreement among these leaders along the fol- 
lowing points concerning religious education in America: 

First. The widespread ignorance of the meaning of 
Christianity and of church membership demands a greatly 
increased emphasis on the teaching office of the Church. 

Second. The revelation of the large degree of failure in 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 159 

our religious education challenges us to a far more serious 
attention to the Sunday school and a candid examination 
of its curriculum, methods of teaching, and organization. 
The present curriculum, the present methods of teaching, 
and the present organization, simply have not produced the 
results they sought — that is, they have not taught even 
those who attended them the meaning of the Christian re- 
ligion nor have they trained young men in the way of Chris- 
tian living. 

Third. Training in intelligent habits of private and 
public worship should be greatly stressed. 

Fourth. Two false conceptions of Christianity should 
be openly and convincingly combated — that it is selfish 
in that it aims simply at salvation of the individual from 
hell fire, and that it is a negative thing made up of "Thou- 
shalt-nots." 

Fifth. A Christian interpretation of sex life must be a 
regular part of all Christian education. All leaders agree 
that sexual immorality was the greatest problem in per- 
sonal morality in the army. 

Sixth. The religious instruction and training given in 
the home outlives all other religious education. In direct- 
ing or controlling that influence lies our greatest opportunity. 
One leader expressed the consensus of opinion in this way, 
"The faith they have came from the home for the most part, 
and generally from a good mother who taught them." x 

The Hope of the Church. Let us accept these facts 
and judgments and wrestle with them as Jacob wrestled 
with the angel until they yield us a blessing. The hope of 
the Church to-day is in the recognition of the child in her 
midst. The world is learning the value of prevention. 
Robert Raikes, the founder of the Sunday-school movement, 
after he had lived to see its remarkable growth and in- 
fluence upon the children of England said: "I have learned 
that prevention is better than cure. It is better to train a 

1 Religion and American Men, by the Committee on the War and 
the Religious Outlook. Association Press. 



160 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

child to be honest than to reform a thief; it is better to 
train a child to tell the truth than to reform a liar." 

The future of our civilization, whether it be pagan or 
Christian, will be determined by the measure of the Church's 
obedience to the Saviour's command, "Feed my lambs," 
for back of the Church and missions and every movement 
for the redemption of mankind, stands the child. The 
chief concern, therefore, of the Christian forces of America 
should be the careful cultivation of the religious life of the 
nation's children. 

Sunday-School Missions. How shall we meet the 
spiritual needs of the great multitude of children who are 
beyond the reach of any church? Among the great re- 
ligious bodies of America the Presbyterian Church was the 
first to face this problem and decide upon a plan to pro- 
vide its solution. The knowledge that millions of children 
in every part of our country, especially those who were 
living in regions into which religious privileges had not yet 
been introduced, were without opportunities of church or 
Sunday school, stirred the heart of the Church to extend its 
educational activities by establishing a force of workers 
whose special mission is to organize Sunday schools for 
them. These workers are instructed to establish, in every 
neighborhood within their reach, a Sunday-school organiza- 
tion into which the children can be gathered for Bible 
instruction and from which would radiate influence which 
would bear fruit in Christian character, Christian homes, 
and transformed communities. 

Beginnings. Beginning with 14 Sabbath-school mis- 
sionaries this work has grown year by year to a force num- 
bering 140, besides 26 other workers whose special mission 
is to minister to the immigrant population. Into hun- 
dreds of thousands of families the Christian message has 
been introduced for the first time through the labors of 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 161 

these faithful men and women. Family altars have been 
kindled, backsliders have been reclaimed, and the indiffer- 
ent have been brought to repentance. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of children and young people have been gathered into 
the Sunday schools that have been established since the 
beginning of this work, many of them hearing for the first 
time the story of the children's Friend. Through the faith- 
ful teaching of the Word in these schools, many have 
been led to consecrate themselves to his service. 

Fruitage. In these humble schools of religion, am- 
bitions and aspirations have been awakened in the lives of 
a countless number of boys and girls who have gone forth 
into careers of usefulness to their fellows. The town and 
city churches have felt the effect of these labors, for they 
count among their most active workers those who came from 
the country Sunday schools. The foundations of Christian 
character which were laid in the little mission Sunday 
schools back in their rural homes, have withstood the storms 
of temptation and doubt as they have gone out to schools 
and colleges; and in seasons of religious awakening, they 
have been among the first to come forward, offering to 
dedicate their lives to the ministry and to missionary serv- 
ice. 

The Sunday school can go where the Church cannot be 
established. It appeals to everyone. Its aim is not to ad- 
vance denominational prestige, but to provide in the broad- 
est spirit of catholicity for the religious instruction and 
training of the children, to lay the foundations of Christian 
character , and to develop Christian lives. 

Neglecting Children. In spite of this good work 
which has been done in organizing Sunday schools in com- 
munities where the children would otherwise have no re- 
ligious training outside of their homes (and often not there) 
there are still a vast number of children unreached. In 



1 62 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

his recent book, "Religious Education and American De- 
mocracy," Dr. Athearn says, "There are 15,000,000 chil- 
dren of school age in this country who receive no religious 
guidance whatever. There are 35,000,000 over ten years of 
age outside the membership of any church. We are fast 
drifting into a cultured paganism and unless the Church 
takes important steps to stem the present tide of indiffer- 
ence, luxury, and commercial greed this country will soon 
cease to be a Christian nation — if, indeed, a country in 
which three out of four of its citizens are without active 
church relations can be said to be a Christian country 
now." 

In the western states are large areas, comprising parts of 
counties, and entire communities which are either un- 
churched or inadequately churched. A study has been made 
of 16 counties in one western state where it was found that a 
good proportion of the people have no regular church serv- 
ices, not to speak of an adequate religious ministry. In 
these sixteen counties there are 42 entire communities which 
have no church organization or Sunday school or pastor or 
regular church activities. There are 60 communities which 
have church organizations or buildings, but lack a resident 
pastor — one of the essentials to church growth and pros- 
perity. 

These conditions are not confined to the far West. Every 
state in the Union has thousands of children nominally 
Protestant but not enrolled in Sunday school and receiving 
no formal religious education. The figures as compiled by 
the Religious Education Department of the Interchurch 
World Survey are startling. 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 163 

Children in United States Under 25 Number Nominally Protestant, Under 25 

Years of Age (1917) Years of Age, not in Sunday School. 

Alabama 1,418,360 1,100,250 

Arizona 131,890 76,490 

Arkansas 1,059,800 890,000 

California 1,241,900 664,590 

Colorado 464,510 299,910 

Connecticut 594,720 161,100 

Delaware 103,270 39,i5o 

Dist. of Columbia... 155,090 75,920 

Florida 513,060 383430 

Georgia 1,766,460 1,348,790 

Idaho 231490 164,540 

Illinois 3,055,140 1,317,770 

Indiana 1,389,390 55i,59o 

Iowa 1,134,630 570,910 

Kansas 944,450 429,960 

Kentucky 1,340,690 821,150 

Louisiana 1,095,600 624,690 

Maine 342,030 143,700 

Maryland 686,830 231,570 

Massachusetts 1,699,180 627,210 

Michigan 1,516,190 584,160 

Minnesota 1,225,590 706,330 

Mississippi 1,205,700 755,900 

Missouri 1,749,090 883,490 

Montana 222,270 115,620 

Nebraska 693,420 426,940 

Nevada 40,970 35,290 

New Hampshire 195,540 66,150 

New Jersey 1,446,810 574,200 

New Mexico 249,950 132,950 

New York 4,916,280 1,755,870 

North Carolina 1,484,970 885,540 

North Dakota 436,230 306,800 

Ohio 2,449,680 1,052,880 

Oklahoma 1,351,010 ^,028,000 

Oregon 387,890 240,170 

Pennsylvania 4,330,020 977,960 

Rhode Island 294,150 99,080 

South Carolina 1,035,210 669,340 

South Dakota 379,990 270,970 

Tennessee 1,313,630 970,420 

Texas 2,664,090 1,376,580 

Utah 253,000 106,040 

Vermont 160,670 62,810 

Virginia 1,261,420 860,080 

Washington 734,8oo 496,350 

West Virginia 805,180 472,640 

Wisconsin 1,314,120 779,590 

Wyoming 88,780 59,340 



Total 53,575,040 Total 27,274,210 



164 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Such "spiritual illiteracy is the forerunner of moral bank- 
ruptcy and national decay." The proverb "Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he 
will not depart from it," works both ways. Train him in 
the religious way and he will so order his life; train him 
irreligiously, or fail to train him at all, and he will order his 
life according to his own selfishness. 

Summing Up the Unfinished Task in Sunday- 
School Extension. With such facts before us the obli- 
gation of the Church to the neglected childhood of America 
is clearly manifest. Children of the prairies and plains, 
children of the mining, oil, and lumber camps, children of 
the Southern Mountains, and the dark-skinned children of 
the palmettos and pines are growing into maturity, into 
citizenship, without the knowledge of God, with no training 
toward righteousness, with no one to lead them in the 
Christian way. Children who do not know God, who are in 
ignorance of the Bible, who have never been taught to 
pray and have never heard the voice of their parents or of 
a Christian minister uplifted in prayer — it is not of such 
children that a people's strength is built. What hope does 
the future hold for us as a Church or as a Christian nation, 
unless we approach this, undoubtedly our greatest problem, 
with an aggressive program of religious education, big 
enough and broad enough to guarantee to every child in 
America at least an opportunity to be taught the truths of 
the Bible and the principles of Christian living? 

Sunday-School Development. Simply to establish 
Sunday schools is not enough. Making the schools effective 
is the real task. The Sabbath-school missionaries take them 
under their fostering care, develop the workers, and bring 
them step by step to a position where they may render help- 
ful service to their communities. 

The Sabbath-school missionaries not only organize and 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 165 

maintain new Sunday schools, but they render efficient serv- 
ice to the Sunday schools connected with organized 
churches by holding conferences with their officers and 
teachers, and introducing new and effective methods of 
work. 

They organize teacher-training classes, encourage the 
introduction of the Cradle Roll and Home Department, 
besides promoting young people's organizations. They are 
charged with the responsibility for the entire program of 
educational endeavor, adapting it to the local conditions so 
far as may be practicable. Daily Vacation Bible Schools 
are being promoted and successfully conducted through their 
efforts in small towns and in rural districts; young people's 
organizations are being formed and encouraged; pastors' 
classes are being introduced, and in a few cases, through 
the cooperation of Christian school-teachers, week-day re- 
ligious instruction is being provided. Yet the number of 
Sabbath-school missionaries is so small and the size of the 
task so great that the Church cannot say it is solving the 
problem of religious education. We are only making a 
beginning. 

Religious Education for the Immigrant. Over 21,- 
000,000 children are being reared in the homes of these 
foreign born where association of language, reading matter, 
and social life is tinctured with the spirit and ideas of the 
homelands of the parents. 

These children sit with our native-born American children 
in the public schools, but, except in rare cases, little has 
been done toward inviting them to participate in the privi- 
leges of our church schools. Sunday schools are being con- 
ducted in connection with mission churches and social centers 
that have been established by our own and other evangelical 
bodies, but the number of foreign-born children reached 
by them is still comparatively small. This is a practical 



1 66 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

problem that should be earnestly considered by our churches, 
especially by those located in sections where immigrant 
families are residing within the boundaries of the parish. 
Thousands of children of foreigners are playing on the 
streets within the sound of the songs and exercises of our 
Sunday schools, but no one invites them to come and par- 
ticipate in these services. Special classes could be formed 
for such children, workers could be enlisted and developed, 
and various forms of Christian social service could be ren- 
dered that would have a salutary effect upon the life of 
the whole community, besides fulfilling the obligations of 
the local church to use all its facilities for the Christian 
nurture of all the children within its reach regardless of 
ethnical considerations. 

The Daily Vacation Bible School. The plan of the 
Daily Vacation Bible School was originally conceived to 
meet this very need, and in most cases it has been very 
effective, but we should take the next step and make the 
immigrant children equally welcome in our Sunday schools 
and other church activities. 

But the Daily Vacation Bible School does far more than 
provide some elements of religious education for immi- 
grant children, slum children, and other children who are 
not reached by the church school. It has been found to be 
a most helpful agency in supplementing during the summer 
vacation season the religious instruction which the children 
of the Sunday school receive. The sessions of the Sunday 
school occupy only fifty-two hours per year; the Daily 
Vacation Bible School occupies two and a half hours per 
day for five days each week, covering a period of five weeks, 
or a total of sixty-two and a half hours a year. 

The Church is rapidly coming to a realization of the 
value of the Daily Vacation Bible School, and the growth 
of the movement within the past few years has been almost 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 167 

phenomenal. Last year 237 such schools were reported in 
connection with Presbyterian churches, with an enrollment 
(in the schools) of nearly 27,749. Doubtless there were 
many more from whom no report was received. From 
present indications, the reports of this year will show a 
great increase over last year's figure. At the present rate 
of development, it is safe to predict that within the near 
future every church will consider the Daily Vacation Bible 
School as necessary a factor in the religious nurture of its 
children as the Sunday school and other agencies through 
which this work is being developed. 

Week-Day Religious Instruction. There is a grow- 
ing conviction among leaders in religious educational work 
that neither the Sunday school, nor the Daily Vacation 
Bible School, nor both, can adequately meet the widespread 
demand for a thoroughgoing system of religious education. 
The Religious Education Division of the Interchurch World 
Movement reported that 1,600,000 Jewish children in the 
United States receive an average of 335 hours of religious 
education annually in the synagogue schools. The 8,000,000 
Catholic children receive 200 hours of religious education 
annually under the system of the Roman Catholic Church. 
In comparison with the half -hour weekly teaching period 
in our Sunday schools which is provided for the Protestant 
children of America, the evangelical bodies may find the 
explanation of the hold which the Jewish and Catholic 
churches have upon their children and youth, and the rea- 
son for the drifting away of so many of our Protestant boys 
and girls from the church and its services. 

Religious nurture rather than revivalism of the old-time 
sort is the more normal, more reliable, and more fruitful 
instrument for the evangelization of the world. If the 
Church could hold its own children, the outpeopling power 
of a righteous stock would be a most important factor in 



1 68 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

making all the world Christian. The experience of the 
Church shows that preservation is better than rescue. The 
exaltation of religious education to the highest place among 
the instrumentalities with which the Church is to establish 
the Kingdom of God among men is, as yet, neither universal 
nor complete ; but evidently such a place for religious educa- 
tion in the program of the Church cannot be long withheld, 
No school on a basis of one-hour-a-day-one-day-a-week can 
be made a sufficient instrument for this great task. No 
additional time we may be able to give to it on our over- 
crowded Christian Sunday can help matters very much. 
We must have week-day religious instruction. In the 
evolution of the educational practices of the Church, it may 
be that we shall come to think of Sunday as the suitable 
time for children's worship and praise; to think of re- 
ligious instruction as a task for the week-day church school 
leaving the Sunday free for the culture of the deeper re- 
ligious emotions which find expression in song and prayer 
and Christian fellowship. 

Hence many are coming to recognize that one of the 
greatest tasks of the Church, in this day of great tasks, is 
how to organize, equip, and maintain a system of week- 
day church schools which shall have an adequate program of 
religious instruction, adequate time for such instruction, 
and which shall reach as many children and youth as 
possible. 1 

To meet the situation we may do one of three things: 

a. Insist that the State provide religious education in the 

public schools. That would certainly result in the 
secularization of religious instruction. Moreover, 
it is contrary to the principles of democracy. 

b. Erect a system of parochial schools. That would 

withdraw the Church's children from the common 
life of the public schools which is so essential an 
element in training for life in a democracy. 

c. Create, in cooperation with public schools, a system of 

week-day religious instruction, this instruction to be 

1 Squires, The Gary Plan of Church Schools. 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 169 

given under Church auspices, at the Church's ex- 
pense, by teachers provided by the Church. This 
would be true religious education. 

Great encouragement has been given this movement by 
the recent action of the Board of Education of the City 
of New York in granting one afternoon each week of 
the school year for religious instruction of children in their 
respective churches. This action was the outgrowth of 
the work of an organization known as the Protestant Teach- 
ers' Association in which several hundred Protestant public- 
school teachers had voluntarily pledged themselves to give 
to all the school children who could be enlisted, a stated 
number of hours of religious instruction, in addition to the 
regular school period and without encroaching upon the 
school curriculum. Doubtless other cities will follow the 
action taken by the Board of Education of New York in 
opening the way for the work to be done under Church 
auspices. Intelligent and persistent effort will be required 
to make the movement for week-day religious instruction 
universal, but the life of the Protestant Church is threatened 
unless we succeed. It will cost money. But the Protestant 
Church is to-day paying three times as much for its janitors 
as it is paying for the religious education of its children and 
youth. 

Organizing the Church for Religious Education. 
Every church worker recognizes the necessity of bringing 
all educational activities of the Church, both instructional 
and expressional, under a properly graded and correlated 
program. Our leaders in the work of religious education 
have formulated plans to help attain such a goal. Churches 
everywhere are being urged to organize a Council of Re- 
ligious Education, under a simple and practical plan which 
is adaptable to churches of large or small numerical strength. 



170 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

Complete courses of religious study — each course designed 
to meet the needs of a particular age group — have been 
worked out on pedagogical principles. The limits of space 
prohibit a longer description of these plans of courses, and 
the reader is recommended to the Sabbath School Board, 
Philadelphia headquarters. There too, much helpful litera- 
ture may be had on the whole subject of religious edu- 
cation. 

The Christian Home. Without doubt the most im- 
portant agency for religious education is the Christian home. 
We have drifted away from the old-fashioned home, and we 
have lost immeasurably in the breaking down of parental 
respect and authority, in the lack of reverence for sacred 
things, and in the failure to recognize God as the head of 
the household, and to depend upon his kind providence for 
daily needs. The fires on the family altar have died out 
and parental instruction in religion has well-nigh dis- 
appeared. 

Perplexities of a Parent. Take the average parent 
to-day. Let us call him Smith. He is a modern father, 
cultured, keen at business, a decent and respectable citizen. 
Smith has lost the sense of fellowship with a divine Father 
who rules wisely and well. As the years have gone by Smith 
has become more and more engrossed in his business and 
has gradually given up those practices of worship and medi- 
tation that were the atmosphere of such fellowship. He has 
been making money and has allowed his money to make him 
independent of God. 

Moreover, Smith's reading hasn't been especially helpful 
in reminding him that something precious was being lost 
out of his inner life. As a result of what little reading on 
religious subjects he has done he feels, as one father ex- 
pressed it recently, that "Somehow Science has taken away 
his Lord and he knows not where she has laid him." There 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 171 

has been much digging these last years into the Scriptures 
and into the earliest records of Christianity. As the archeol- 
ogists and the philologists and other "ologists" have dug 
deep in their attempts to unearth the truth that lies hidden 
under the dust of twenty centuries, some of that dust has 
been scattered about and has flown into the eyes of Smith 
and he has run away fearing that something terrible has 
happened to his religion. His fears have not been allayed 
when he has seen other learned folk delving into the soul 
itself in a study of the psychology of religion. Smith does 
not pretend to know just what this study has actually de- 
veloped, but the net result in his own thinking is that "it 
is all beyond him." To Smith, God is no longer a reality; 
he is just a concept. As a Methodist preacher once put it, 
"He is afraid to reach up a hand in prayer to touch the 
throne of the Almighty without looking back over his 
shoulder to see if some psychologist has written some new 
article that might make him modify his faith." 

Smith's Morals Are Still Good. But in spite of all 
his perplexities Smith is a good and honorable man and 
his conscience is hitting on every cylinder. Why? Because 
long ago in his youth he walked with God and talked with 
him as a Father. With the help of God he formed habits 
of mind and conduct that were clean and self-respecting. 
He learned to look upon the human body as a temple of 
the Holy Spirit. He learned to reverence humanity and he 
regarded human personality as something made in the 
image of God. The walks and talks with God are gone now 
for Smith. The glory of life has faded into the light 
of common day, but the habits of conduct and the sensi- 
tive conscience remain. The question is, can Smith pass 
on to his children his conscience, his habits of conduct, his 
morals, and his spirit without the God that inspired them, 
without the religion that nurtured them? 



1 72 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

A Substitute for God. Well, Smith has been trying it. 
He has been telling his children that this and that act is 
"unsocial" and the children laugh and ask, "What of it?" 
He tells them it is selfish, and they answer, "Why not?" 
and finally he falls back in desperation upon the vague 
threat that they will get into trouble and the children chuck 
him under the chin and say, "Who cares?" He tries to 
get them interested in humanitarian effort, community work, 
social service, settlement work, and so forth, and they enjoy 
it just as they enjoy any new game — until the novelty 
wears off. He urges that it is their duty to carry on, to help 
the sick, to relieve the distressed, to do everything in their 
power, not only in charity, but in the actual making of 
life more livable for the other fellow — to make justice and 
mercy and the milk of human kindness cover the earth as 
the waters cover the sea. The children are puzzled. They 
want to know what is duty and who started it anyway. 
Poor Smith! He finds humanitarianism a poor substitute 
for God. 

There Is No Substitute for God. The redeeming 
fact about Smith is that he has been coming honestly to 
recognize that there is no substitute for God. Smith can- 
not pass on to his children his moral standards, his respect 
for human personality, his reverence for the divinity in 
human nature, his spirit of service, without the God that 
inspired them, and the religion that nurtured them. When 
this realization dawns upon him, he lifts to heaven the 
old petition: "Lord, restore my soul. Give me back my faith 
in thee — not for my sake only, but for these children 
who will take my place when I am gone." The answer to 
that petition has always been the same. The Father meets 
the prodigal while he is still far from home. It is the glory 
of the Christian religion that it promises the restoration of 
all things. "I will restore unto you the years the locust 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 173 

hath eaten; that the canker worm and the palmer worm 
have destroyed." So Smith takes God back into his home 
and old joys back into his life. 

The Christian Home of To-Morrow. The brightest 
ray in our hope for to-morrow is the fact that a new Chris- 
tian home is emerging out of the spiritual chaos of the last 
few years. A growing host of men and women have fought 
their way through the barbed entanglements of theological 
doubts, through the alleged differences of science and re- 
ligion, through all the mental suffering that marks the 
progress from a faith that is traditional to a faith that is 
vital. And having persevered they have conquered. They 
nave won "God out of knowledge and good out of infinite 
pain, sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain." They 
are establishing Christian homes — homes of comradeship 
with each other and with God. "In plenty and in want, in 
joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health," they abide with 
him. It is a happy comradeship, an abundant life. In those 
homes "bringing up the children in the nurture and ad- 
monition of the Lord" doesn't mean sending them to Sun- 
day school an hour a week. It means training them to do 
justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, seek- 
ing his Kingdom and his righteousness first. Religion in 
these homes is not a negative thing of "don'ts," but a posi- 
tive thing of faith and hope and love. Religious instruction 
is daily and systematic and covers every human relation- 
ship — individual, social, sexual, political, industrial, and 
artistic. Mr. Dallas Lore Sharp gives us a picture of such 
a home. 1 

Each of us has his own Bible, and one of the boys is 
Bible warden. He puts them on after breakfast, as the old 
servant in the Ruskin household put on the dessert. Every 
morning, as soon as breakfast is over, and while we are still 

1 "Education for Individuality." Atlantic Monthly, June 1920. 



174 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

at the table (it is fatal to rise), the Bibles are brought in 
and passed around, and beginning at the head of the table, 
we read aloud in turn, dividing the chapter by verses equally 
among us. Seven mornings a week, D.V., we do this, and 
on Sunday mornings, for years, those seven chapters were 
reviewed, discussed, and illustrated with a series of great 
Bible pictures. Besides this, we studied Toy's "History of 
the Religion of Israel," and read a life of Christ which I had 
the temerity to write for one of our popular magazines when 
a theological student; we followed Paul in his wanderings; 
but the daily reading was and is the big thing — right along 
from day to day, dry places, hard places, and bad places, 
never missing a line — not even the numbering of the 
tribes, the building of the tabernacle, the who-begat-whom 
chapters, Ruth and Rahab and the Scarlet Woman: every- 
body, everything, just as it reads, without a quiver, and with 
endless joy and zest. 

If it is a "dry" place like the building of the tabernacle, 
so much the better lesson in patience and concentration; if 
it is a "bad" place (and there are some horrid spots in the 
Old Testament), the children had better have it frankl> 
with us, than on the sly, and have it early while their only 
interest in it is the interest of fact. If it is a "hard" place, 
as it was this morning in the fifteenth chapter of Joshua, 
we lick it up, to see who can do the cleanest job of pro- 
nunciation, who can best handle his tongue, and make 
most poetry out of the cities with their villages. 

But there are the beautiful places, the thrilling places — 
the story, the poetry, the biography, the warning, the ex- 
hortation, the revelation, the priest, the prophet, the Great 
Teacher, the twelve disciples, kings and common people, 
and everywhere the presence of God. 

I have not tried to shape the children's religious faith, 
that being a natural thing without need of shaping, unless, 
distorted by dogma, it must be reshaped till it again be- 
comes a little child's. I have learned religion of them, 
not they of me, with my graduate degree in theology, which 
I would so gladly give in exchange for the heart of a little 
child! 

We read the Bible as we read other books, for it is like 
Other books, only better ; and so we read it of tener — every 



THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN 175 

morning after breakfast; we then say The Lord's Prayer 
together, and do the best we can to sing the Doxology, little 
Jersey, the dog, joining in. This makes a good beginning 
for the day; and a very good beginning, too, for language, 
and literature, and life. 

To help men and women to establish such homes is the 
most fundamental task of the Presbyterian Church and of 
every other church. 



Questions for Discussion 

1. In what sense is Christian education a missionary 

enterprise? 

2. How important to Jesus was the child? How jar has 

the Protestant Church lived up to his estimate? 
How many hours of religious training per week, for 
example, does the average Protestant child have? 
Compare with the average Catholic child. With 
the average Jewish child. What are the facts also 
concerning the present enrollment and attendance 
in Protestant Sunday schools? 

3. From the report of the war chaplains, what further 

light is obtained concerning the efficiency or in- 
efficiency of Protestant religious education in America 
to date? 

4. What are "Sabbath-school missionaries"? How valu- 

able is their work? {Note its intensive as well as 
its extensive character.) How completely do they 
cover the field? How many children, for example, 
still fail to receive religious instruction? 

5. What was the first object of the Daily Vacation Bible 

School? What other value has it proved to possess? 



176 UNFINISHED BUSINESS 

What may individual churches do for the immigrant 
children in their vicinity? 

6. Why is week-day religious instruction needed? How 

may it be provided for? With what effort? What 
action taken by the Board of Education of New York 
City offers a beginning for such work? Has any 
city near you taken similar action? 

7. How may improvement be made in the quality of 

instruction offered as to material, method, and 
teacher? 

8. What is the responsibility of parents in the home? 

Discuss fully showing difficulties and ways and means 
of "carrying on." 

9. Describe an ideal Christian home in its religious train- 

ing of children. 



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